Contributors
Joseph Shea is a Glacier Hydrologist for the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development’s (ICIMOD) Cryosphere Monitoring Project. ICIMOD is a regional intergovernmental learning and knowledge sharing centre serving the eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush Himalayas. Joseph’s material chronicles glacier activity in the area pre and post earthquake.
Susan Brandt lived in Nepal from 1972-78 where she helped Jesse Brandt and Kalden Sherpa set up and run Sherpa Trekking Service and Trekker’s Dried Foods. She taught English at the Language Institute run by the US Information Service. She visited Nepal between 1978-84 while she was living in Bangladesh, and she moved back in 1994, where she was involved with the UN Women’s Organization and the American Women’s Organization. Jesse Brandt come to Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1962-64. He returned to Nepal in 1970 and, with Kalden Sherpa, established Sherpa Trekking Service, the second trekking company in Nepal. In 1976-78, he began drying and packaging foods for trekking groups, and taught PE at Lincoln School. In 1994, he returned to Nepal with the UNFPS Regional Office for South and Central Asia.
Victor Klymko was in the Langtang valley when the 2015 earthquake hit. He is a visiting faculty member with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Mississippi whose research centers on the area of experimental condenced matter physics. Victor is an amateur photographer who travels to new places whenever possible, and his photos capture the beauty of the Langtang valley before the earthquake, as well as the destruction and organizing efforts of survivors following the earthquake.
Dr. Francis Khek Gee Lim, Ph.D. (2004) in Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, is Assistant Professor in the Division of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). His research interests include religion, tourism, and the politics of development. Francis has published a number of scholarly articles about religion and tourism in the Langtang valley.
Ashok Silwal is a Nepali reporter and tourism specialist who was conferred the title “Goodwill Ambassador” by the Langtang Management and Reconstruction Committee. He has made two documentaries about Langatng. The first is titled ‘Waking and Walking,’ a documentary about the first group of trekkers to visit Langtang after the earthquake. He is also the director of ‘Ghar Farkiraheka Manchhe,’ a documentary about Langtang locals returning to their village after the earthquake. Ashok is also the media coordinator for the National Association of Tourism (NEAT).
Dinesh is a photojournalist working for the Annapurna Post in Kathmandu. In addition to providing his own photographs documenting Nepal post-earthquake, he led some of the photojournalism workshops for the Langtang Photo Album project, drawing from years of experience with photography and storytelling.
Steve Emerman is a professor in the Department of Earth Science at Utah Valley University. His current areas of research include the use of lichenometry in archaeological geology. He holds a PhD in Geophysics from Cornell, an M.A. in Geophysics from Princeton, with a B.S. in Mathematics from Ohio State University. Dr. Emerman has published extensively on lichenometry in Nepal, and studied lichen in the Langtang valley.
Brian Peniston first came to Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1975. He has experience in rural enterprise, protected area and natural resource management, food security, climate change adaptation, operations research, primary health care, community development, mountain agriculture, cultural restoration, and community-based tourism. Brian worked with The Mountain Institute (TMI) from 1996 through mid-2014, directing a national park, Himalayan regional programs, and Innovation and Livelihood programs. Brian worked in Nepal for 24 years, and his work experience in Asia includes the Wildlife Fund, USAID, Plan International, CARE, GIZ, American Refugee Committee, Britain Nepal Medical Trust, and US Peace Corps. Brian has Masters degrees in Forestry (Yale University, 1992), Public Health (University of Hawaii, 1982) and an undergraduate degree in Philosophy (Connecticut College, 1974).
Sébastien Montaz-Rosset is an award-winning producer of innovative and creative factual and commercial films. He is currently producing “Langtang,” the third film in the ‘Summits of My Life’ project, with Kilian Jornet. In April 2015, ultra-runner Kilian Jornet was preparing for an expedition to Everest as part of his project, ‘Summits of My Life’, together with alpinist Jordi Tosas and filmmaker Sébastien Montaz-Rosset. Two days before departure, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hits Nepal with devastating effect and Jordi’s beloved Langtang Valley is all but eradicated. Putting their original objective to one side, the team travel to Nepal with the hope of offering help in the place that they hold in their hearts. Langtang is an ode to life, a tribute to hope and a search for new horizons.
Johanna Fricke is an audio documentary storyteller. Based in Germany, she creates long-form stories for public radio and online. Johanna has been visiting Nepal over the past 10 years, and was one of the first people to visit Langtang after the earthquake in November of 2015. She is an active member of the Langtang Memory Project production team, and has recorded most of the oral testimonies featured on the website.
Jan Møller Hansen is a self-taught and international award-winning photographer, who works with visual story telling and social documentary. Over the past 25 years, he has worked in diplomacy and international development assistance in Asia and Africa for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, Danida, as well as CARE and Action Aid. Like many diplomat, he lived a privileged life, and his personal circles were very much confined to a small group of people within that society. Photography became a very important instrument and tool for his own learning and exploration, and it helped to enhance his understanding of the society and people he lived with. Jan came to Nepal for the first time in 1985, while backpacking through Asia. He became fascinated with the country and its people. His first job was in Nepal in the early 90s, and he was living and working here when the 2015 earthquake hit.
Doug Hall manages the Peace Corps Nepal Photo Project. US Peace Corps volunteers were first sent to Nepal in 1962 and were assigned to jobs outside Kathmandu valley. Almost all of them had cameras and took many photos in the villages and towns they were assigned to, but they took their black-and-white photos and color slides home when they returned to the US. Doug decided to collect and archive these photographs before they were lost to posterity, and the collection now has over 3000 photographs. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, Doug taught science and English in high schools in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 1968-69. In 1970-71 he was USAID’s science education adviser to the Nepal Ministry of Education. In 1971-72 he helped found New ERA, a non-profit research firm doing development research in Nepal. He retired as Executive Director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies in 2006.
Joe Sieder was a solo trekker on the Tamang Heritage trail when the 2015 Nepal earthquake hit. While he was in a relatively safe spot on the trail between Thuman to Lingling, he spent the next few days documenting the earthquake and its aftermath. Originally from the UK, Joe has spent most of the last decade living in Japan and Thailand, and traveling around Asia. His photographs from Nepal in the wake of the April 25th earthquake were featured in El Pais, the LA Times, ABC News and others. Since the earthquake, Joe has assisted various local NGOs and foundations in documenting Nepal’s relief and reconstruction efforts.
Austin Lord is a anthropologist and visual ethnographer. He was in Langtang during the 2015 earthquake.
Virginia Dixon is the founding Trustee of Langtang Valley Health Australia, a clinic/health post in Langtang that employed two Nepalese nurses. The initiative began in 2012 to organize donors to “sponsor” nurses and health workers to ensure skilled staff stay in the rural region. The Langtang Valley Health Center has since ceased operation after the 2015 earthquake, as the clinic was destroyed and both nurses died. Virginia is focused on rebuilding effortsin Nepal via the organization Sustainable Steps, and works at the National Capital Private Hospital in Woden, Australia. She has been travelling to Nepal for 20 years.
Daniel Miller first visited Nepal as a Peace Corps volunteer and began trekking in the Himalayan region in 1974. He has lived and worked in Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Mongolia and has traveled throughout the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau. Trained as a rangeland ecologist, he has used photography to document his work and journeys. He has published numerous scientific articles and books about the rangelands, wildlife and nomads of the Tibetan Plateau and Central Asia. His photographs have been shown in exhibitions in Beijing, Kathmandu and New Delhi. He has two books exploring nomad culture, Drokpa: Nomads of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya, an Sacred Valley, both available on Amazon. He currently works for USAID.
Kesang Tseten is one of Nepal’s renowned film directors. His many films documenting life in Nepal include: We Corner People, winner of Best Nepali Documentary at the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival, 2007; On the Road with the Red God: Machhendranath, winner of Grand Prize at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival and Best Nepali Documentary of the Decade by the Nepal Motion Picture Association, 2005; and We Homes Chaps, featured in the 26th Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, American Museum of Natural History, 2002. He is a graduate of Amherst College and the Columbia School of Journalism. Kesang is currently working on a new film about the Langtang valley.
Kevin Bubriski is an award-winning documentary photographer. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Asian Cultural Council, his photographs are part of permanent collections at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, amongst others. He first came to Nepal in 1975 as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Pasang Tamang is a member of the Langtang community. He runs an trekking business called Tenjin Eco Trek, named after his father who died in the earthquake.
Chiime Tamang is a photographer and member of the Langtang community. He was in Langtang during the earthquake.
Jennifer Bradley is a recent graduate from American University where she received her Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies, concentrating in Identity, Race, Gender, and Culture. She has done extensive research concerning refugee identity through a case study of Bhutanese refugees. This work brought her to Nepal to continue her work with a displaced community from Nepal—the Langtangpas from the earthquake-affected Langtang Valley. She is particularly interested in storytelling as a means of empowerment for marginalized groups and has been an important facilitator for the Langtang Photo Album project since it launched in November.
Prasiit Sthapit is a visual storyteller based in Kathmandu. He graduated from Manipal Institute of Communication, India with a Bachelors in Arts (Journalism and Communication) and was a recipient of the Dr. TMAPai Gold Medal for Best Outgoing Student 2010. That is when he decided journalism was not for him and started looking for other avenues to tell the stories he wanted the world to hear. He is currently associated Fuzz Factory Productions, a multimedia collective based in Kathmandu.
Athena Zelandoni is an Australian freelance documentary photographer and visual storyteller. She is the Issue Editor for the Australian Photojournalist (APJ), as well as the primary online content generator and assistant text editor. The APJ is the subsidiary journal of the Centre for Documentary Practice, which seeks overwhelmingly to make a difference through showcasing works by both photo and text journalists. She was in Langtang during the 2015 Nepal earthquake.
Lhakpa Jangba is a member of the Langtang community, and sits on the Leadership Committee. He owns Dorje Bakery, and was in Langtang during the earthquake.
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