The Art of photography has blossomed relatively late in Nepal. It began in the 1860s as the ruling Ranas learned of the new medium and desired portraits and other documentation (for example, those famous/infamous Chitwan tiger hunt photos) of their lives and institutions. The foreigners who came as climbers, government officials, journalists, and later development workers and tourists were struck by Nepal’s beauty and exotic culture and began to capture it on film. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that Nepalis really began to explore photography as a means of expression. And the lack of an independent media limited the development of photojournalism, an important source of experience and income for budding photographers, until the 1990s.
Similarly, it was difficult to establish an independent organization for photographers to learn from each other and jointly promote their art until the founding of the Amateur Photographers Association of Nepal in 1987, which went through several incarnations and became the Nepal Photographic Society in 1992. Lastly, cameras themselves had been a bit of a scarce commodity in Nepal as they had to be imported and were beyond the financial means of most people until the last few decades.
The last little more than ten years has seen an unprecedented flourishing of Nepali photography. Cameras are present at almost every major event and family portraits and photo albums are prized in almost every middle class home; postcards, posters and photo books reveal an amazing range of the photogenic people, culture, land, and architecture of Nepal; local newspapers and magazines tell powerful photographic stories; and both amateur and professional Nepali photographers are wowing the public in many fields: documentary, landscape, wildlife, portrait, photojournalism, commercial, and even some abstract photographic art.
