Khokana is a traditional Newar village, which holds medieval settlement with cobbled-stones, pond, drainage and bahal. Until a decade ago, the town had no concept of toilet. Associated Press photographer Binod Joshi reminiscence how there were two public defecation areas allocated for men and women separately.
People knew Ngakhusi, a local celebrity now. He had been taking photographs for the past three years but they wondered why he was taking those photos. “People knew I shoot but not why I shoot and where I publish them. They kept asking me where it all went,” Ngakhusi told Republica. So, he decided to show his works firstly to the villagers to “tell them thank you for being so hospitably photographic.”
Fine Arts student Ngakhusi started his photojournalistic career for a national daily seven months ago but claims he is least interested in the portraits of politicians. “I like photography that is satisfying. I am always on a lookout for creative exploration. And Khokana has given me that, it inspires me,” he says.
For Ngakhusi, photography is light and color. “I am inspired by light and like to play with color,” his shyly saturated photographs exemplifies his statement.
Many of his photographs are usual shots. For instance, portrait of a child, old woman carrying a bunch load and cultivations in fields. But he justifies saying that the usual shots are for his “audience.” He says, “It goes above their head for normal people who do not understand the technicality of photographs. So, many of the photos are feel-good shots.”
But some of them also show great technicality and patience. One particular photograph is an epitome of nature’s delight as a ray of sunlight falls on the Khokana village. That particular shot took Ngakhusi five hours. For another shot, of Khokana village above the clouds and quite literally, he had to go to a nearby hill at four in the morning for at least a week.
Photos that feature dawn and dusk of the village life is truly magnificent, like a silhouette of a couple walking to their farm in dawn, another of the dawn portraying a shadow image of a man taking back home his day’s cultivation in a kharpan and another one which features temple and electrical lines together in dusk showing both modernity and culture intermingling.
A farewell single-file funeral procession for a cremation rites called Dey Thakali is another photograph that depicts a truly village community come together to mourn the death of the village’s eldest. There are at least seven photographs of different jatras (festivals) in the Khokana village including the ever-famous Khokana Jatra, Gai Jatra, Sikali Jatra, Lakhey Jatra and Dey Pukha Jatra. And all these parts of the village life, Ngakhusi has been able to capture superbly.
The photographs were taken in his prosumer camera Nikon D200 and D300. Ngakhusi says there is no culture of sharing knowledge. “Nobody taught me about the beauty of RAW format images. I look at photographs that I took earlier and wonder only if I had taken those in ‘.raw’ formats,” he lodges a complaint against his senior colleagues.
Ngakhusi plans to bring out a photo book on Khokana but feels he is not yet ready. “There are shots that are yet to be explored in Khokana,” he says.
(41-photographs are exhibited at the Khokana Bihar from September 21 to 24 and Ngakhusi plans to bring the exhibition to Kathmandu in near future.)
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