MINI PORTFOLIO
The first of my recent projects was in response to a request for a mini portfolio of Four Himalayan Photographs. These are to be donated to a college art department as an alumni gift. The intention was that the group of photographs would be a teaching aid, a representation of my best work, and an adjunct my book Himalayan Portfolios; Journeys of the Imagination. The mat size selected, 20x24, would allow the pictures to be used as a dramatic wall display, or be hand held for study, or just hidden in the archives to be awakened by the horn call of a wandering adventurer.
The idea of a mini portfolio deserves to be more widely explored. One image can indeed suffice. It can reverberate in the mind of the viewer in ways that are hard to explain. I stand before certain of Edward Weston’s images and keep asking myself, how did he pull this off? The light emerges from the picture. The light emerges from the picture. The object has a sculptural form that is sufficient unto itself. It is an icon without iconography. Is this art object the “thing in itself”?
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Immanuel Kant stands by my side and marvels -- yet scratches his head.
But when one picture is placed beside another the viewer is invited to enter into a dialogue. My book is a dialog of exploration. The viewer is challenged to enter different imaginative worlds; the world of those who live amongst the mountains and the world of those who have risked their lives following a trail into the unknown. Each of the pictures in the mini portfolio was taken after many days of walking and after crossing high and difficult passes. This is part of the performance record, part of the iconography.
In selecting the images we decided two of the photographs should connect to the mountain culture and two should be of major peaks.
With great reluctance I was persuaded to part with one of my silver prints of ‘Braga in Evening Light’ made many years ago (HP, page 85). The monastery served to represent Tibetan Buddhism. I used it in this way, along with the photograph of Shey Monastery, Inner Dolpo, in the Benton Museum show in 2008 (HP, page 58). To go with this image I made a large digital print of the complex Barley Harvest scene at Tsharka in Inner Dolpo (HP page 67 ). The image, which has several features directly related to Tibetan Buddhism, has so many different work scenes going on that it demands to be a large print. Because of the deep shadows created by the harsh midday light it is extremely difficult to make a good silver print, but with digital printing I could soften the shadows where necessary. For the two mountain scenes we settled on the two poles of my portfolios: Broad Peak from Concordia in the Karakoram of Pakistan and the Kangchenjunga Storm taken from Pangpema (HP pages. 30 and 126.) The digital printing gave me a chance to carefully grade the contrast in the distance layers in the former in a way that creates a sense of three dimensional space. In the latter case the negative has a spot in the sky which makes digital printing the only practical option.
The work is part of a photographic tradition that goes back to the earliest days of photography and yet it has been executed in a time of technological change. Digital methods that did not exist when I started to phtograph the Himalayas have become a part of the process. All photographic black and white images are, by necessity, representation in which the broad tonal range of the actual scene is transcribed to a paper with a much smaller range; color is eliminated in order to favor of detail and form and access different visual associations. In the portfolio text I have explained about the equipment, the subject matter and the printing choices. The iconography is much older that the invention of the camera. The Buddhist related images contain emblems of a commitment to the absolute that is in tension with our Western mindset. The tradition of representing the awe, wonder, terror and joy of the mountain sublime began as biblical and classical poetry and only later became a visual language. Both are challenges that require our serious attention.
PARALLEL OUTLETS
The mini portfolio is an extension of the book. This is also the case with the set of three images from the book displayed at the recent Springfield, MA, show organized by the New England Large Format Photographic Collective (NELFPC). Broad Peak and the Tsharka Barley Harvest were the same, but the third image was the picture of the field pattern after the barley harvest Shimen (HP page 63.) Smaller prints of the same three images were also donated to a fund raiser for the Middlesex Hospital Cancer Center in Middletown, CT. that took place on March 29.
The cancer fund raiser initiated a NELFPC weekend that included a workshop on palladium-platinum printing by Sandy Hale. This venerable process can produce prints of great delicacy and beauty. Not all images are equally suitable for his method of printing, but I could envision certain of my Himalayan images working well in this medium. We each made a digital negative from our own digital file. Then we each made a contact print, using an ultraviolet light exposure on coated paper
we had prepared.
The image was developed. My image was, I think, under exposed, but it was good enough to suggest that further labor could be rewarding. The search for the print that will most fully reveals the living image is part of the large format tradition tradition.
MORE TO BE ADDED
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Inside the government school at Hushe
The road follows the Pyanj River due north. As it flows north the river becomes more turbulent because the valley narrows and the level drops some 4,700 ft. Before the river swings to the southwest it takes a Z detour through a narrow gorge with near vertical walls. 
The photograph shows a trail along the Afghan side of the gorge. On the Tajik side the road in many places has been blasted out of the cliff face.
At Kalaikhum (1,200m/3,934ft) we left the border and the river to climb over a high grassy plateau region and eventually reached our final destination Duschanbe. 
This culture we glimpsed while visiting Langar, Yamg and Khorog, The above picture is of performer in a folk music event at Yamg. The hats are signatures of that particular village.
Permission to photograph women in many Muslim countries is normally refused but here everyone was delighted to be photographed — old and young, male and female. The above photo is of a holiday gathering at Langar. Head scarves for women seemed to be optional.
Women shopping at the Afghan market near the Khorog bridge.
Afghan selling boots.
The above photograph shows to the left the custodian, the driving force in the enterprise, and his cousin who was there to read some of Mubarak’s poetry. In addition to the poetry, that reminded me a little of Rabindranath Tagore in its universalism (but it draws on mystic Shia Muslim traditions about Ali.) He wrote songs, commentaries on the Koran and devised a solar devotional calendar. 
From the pass we descended to the desolate ash-grey landscape of the 
The Pamir River defines the Afghan border that is the northern boundary of the bulge in the Wakhan corridor. We followed the river to its junction with the Wakhan River at which point their fusion become known as the Pyanj River. Both tributaries can be called the upper Oxus. At our first encounter the Pamir River was wandering through a near desert. It did not look as if crossing it by one means or another would be a serious problem.
An Afgan caravan
As the Panj river junction was approached the river narrowed and became more turbulent and grass was at last visible. 
We did not know it at the time (August 11, 2010), but the turbulence of the river reflected the delay in summer snow melting. The levels of all the rivers were exceedingly high. This delay was a substantial factor in creating the floods in Pakistan which were just starting to take place. We learned about them later. The notion that something might be abnormal came to us suddenly as we rounded a curve in the road into a side valley. 
Near the Chinese border there were snow capped peaks (the Celestial Mountains, Tien Shahn), but they were obscured by a haze of loess dust that was unrelated to the dust churned up by the enormous Chinese trucks that travel the highway. The highway was, no doubt, once paved. The process of crossing the border involved multiple check points each of which involving a ritual of multiple passport inspections. We were checked and rechecked both before and after passing through a winding section of no-mans-land. A long dusty descent invigorated by miles of road construction brought us to a final inspection, with photographs added to the file, and to Kashgar. 
ing to puzzle out why someone was being paid to follow us around and take photographs of us taking photographs. The photograph shows our watcher pretending to be interested in photographing bread. 
Since returning I have been reading 
At the pass we once more went through multiple checks before entering a 7 km no-mans-land where we studied the long line of trucks enduring to endless wait until our new land cruiser's arrived. Beyond the border we entered a new realm of high altitude pasture, the Alay valley.
To the south a long line of snow capped peaks, the Trans-Alay range of the Northern Pamirs, arose abruptly from the grassland. Somewhere hiding in this vast landscape the Main Pamir Fault marks the line where the older basin rocks underthrust the northern Pamirs. This is also a suture line where the Northern Pamir terrain became attached to the Asian mainland. To the west along the border range is Lenin Peak (7,134 m /23,406 ft).
