It was a crisp winter morning in 1985, when Kevin Bubriski found the frame he wanted to capture at Ee Bahal, Patan. The frame included two chaityas, behind them was the skeleton of an incomplete building; deep in the background, a thin veil of mist-covered other chaityas.

A dozen children circled him with questions about his camera. And soon he convinced them to pose for a photograph he had visualised, designating each of them a spot to stand and instructed them to look directly into the camera. One kid at the front had his face covered with a shawl and sat casually on the base of one of the chaityas. Others had their hands in their pockets.

The picture till date remains one of Bubriski’s favourite photographs. “I like this one a lot,” says the American documentary photographer, in Thamel, taking a pause to flip through Portrait of Nepal, the book that brought him the acclaim of being a documentary photographer. The book had also won the Golden Light Documentary Award in 1993.

“This picture was composed but it still has so much to say. You can say my work is in-between documentary photography and fine art photography,” Bubriski says. “The photojournalists capture an event but what I do is capture anything that is visually interesting to me.” Bubriski is not hell-bent on telling a story with an image, and yet his pictures tie in deep with the cultural context of a place, telling more about the people in the photographs.

On his website, Bubriski writes, “I believe in the power of documentary photography to create bridges of understanding between people and places, may these photographs stir your curiosity about the complexity and diversity of our world.” And that is exactly what his photographs do for many, bridging time and capturing the essence of cultures. Bubriski has also documented communities in the Far-West and their way of living. To many Nepalis, his images feel pure and wistful, and speak to their personal nostalgia. To foreigners, his photographs are imbued with their romantic notions of Nepal.

When Bubriski came to Nepal for the first time, in 1975, as a US Peace Corps volunteer, he remembers walking through Thamel to Kathmandu Durbar Square. He recalls being amazed to see the architecture and Nepali culture’s nuances. The country’s landscape was beautiful and compelling, he says.

“I started photography in my teenage years. And as a 20-year-old, I was immediately smitten by Nepal’s beauty. I wanted to be here and live here. For a 20-year-old, Nepal left quite an impression,” says Bubriski, in his accented Nepali.

Bubriski was based in Karnali zone at the time, on a project to bring drinking water to villages in the area, but in his free time, he would spend time documenting people’s everyday lives and people in their traditional attire. “Whenever I pick up the camera, I think of making a composition, and it may not always be a powerful image but I try my best to make an image that is compelling, to make people see something. I try to find a way to show people what’s there,” he says.

Back in 1975, Bubriski was among the few who had the luxury of a camera, and was a strange man everyone was curious about because of that. In many photographs, he has captured the people’s curiosity for the piece of technology in Bubriski’s hands. But today, there are more than hundreds of Nepali photographers. “And they are quite good and faster at what they do,” he says. But Bubriski’s photos have become more significant with time, as they trace Nepal’s different timelines. They capture the landscape before urbanisation hit the Capital hard and before people started to think of the outside world.

“A lot has changed, today the country has become more accessible to opportunities. But of course, the distribution of it is still lacking,” he says. “Then again the world has become closer.” 

In his latest book, Mustang in Black and White, published by Vajra Books, his images are not significant to any particular event, rather they are ordinary black and white photos playing with light and shadows. But they speak to people. There are photos of ladders down holes, of landscapes showing vast terrain, of mules lumbering on pathways, of ordinary houses on the route and fluttering prayer flags—the everyday little things that mean different things to different people.

His photos don’t hope to impress anyone and that is perhaps why they evoke poignance. “If photographers are able to take a picture right, the viewer is right there in the place as well,” he says. Bubriski also won the Los Angeles Center of Photography 2019 Photographic book competition for his work, but he says he never intended to come up with a book when he travelled to Mustang, in 2016.

“I just wanted to travel but Sienna Craig, the writer of the book, sent me a list of places I should visit in Mustang, and that is just what the book is,” says Bubriski. “It’s an unravelling with no real narrative.”

But what is surprising of the works is that all Bubriski’s photographs were taken from an iPhone app, Hipstamatic, with iPhone 8. His move is bold, considering people around the world are still arguing if phone photography can be considered photography.

“I sometimes have a conversation with myself about what photography is. Is it the phone or is the camera? And sometimes I have to keep the phone away, thinking the camera is real photography. But they are both real. It’s like Leonardo Da Vinci can make the 16th-century chapel a big painting or a quick sketch, but they are both important,” he says.

Bubriski has visited Nepal many times since 1975, staying around nine years total. This time around, he is here on a personal visit. “I wanted to meet my friends from Mugu, and at the same time wanted to update myself on the place, see what has changed,” he says.

Every time he visits the country, he finds himself hopping from Kathmandu to Patan Durbar Square, to Bhaktapur and places around the country to revisit old memories. “It’s like coming back home. I enjoy going around,” he says.

But like Nepal, Bubriski has changed over the years too. Although at heart he is the same curious 20-year-old boy, he has achieved much as a documentary photographer. His mediums of photography have changed with time. He has published many photographic works, 11 to be exact, of Nepal and other countries. At 43, he also started teaching photography.

“I have always encouraged my students to be curious about places and to try and establish a human relationship with the photographs they take. I ask them to explore the world outside,” he says. Bubriski’s photographs build an emotional relationship with their viewers or peck at human emotions—even if just a mere object, such as a door or simple portrait, they manage to make you feel something.

Many of his works were also able to reveal narratives that never reached mainstream media. One such work was in Maobadi, which showed portraits of People’s Liberation Army, bringing to the fore their journey to the Nepal Army and their hardship during the Maoist insurgency.

“People are quite provincial but it’s important for people to understand that they are living a diverse world because that is how we learn to be empathetic around culture, races and various issues surrounding us,” he says. “And I think photography has the power to sensitise people about that,” says Bubriski.

Bubriski is now 65 and has invested 50 years into photography, but he is still passionate about his profession. For him, taking photographs is a way to collect pieces of the world and present it unfiltered.

“Photographers are now challenging people to think beyond just their small world,” says Bubriski. “They have been presenting to the world diverse stories, telling people about real people and their real problems.”