One photographer. One image. The story behind the shot.
A girl sits bent over her work. Her face is close to the delicate lines, her hand guides the brush. Strands of hair fall forward. Her eyes follow every movement, as if, in this moment, nothing else in the world exists.
She is painting a mandala, part of a centuries old tradition passed down through generations in the Kathmandu Valley. I watch her for a while. The stillness of her posture, the closeness between her face and her work, the delicate movements of her hand. Then I press the shutter.
I had traveled to Nepal for three weeks. For a long time I had wanted to see the Himalayas. My fascination with the mountains had grown through climbing, and eventually I set off on the journey quite spontaneously. I had no idea what awaited me. Some encounters fade. Others stay with us. And sometimes it is a single photograph that takes us back to a moment, years later. The Painter, from my project Colorless, is one of those photographs.
In black and white, color recedes. What remains are lines and textures, light and shadow. The patterns of the mandala, the girl’s posture, the delicate contours of her hands. My gaze moves back and forth between her and her work.
I don’t know what occupies the painter’s thoughts in this moment. I don’t know what her work means to her or what connects her to it. I can only show what I saw. And yet, a connection emerges. Between her and me, reaching beyond the moment the photograph was taken. And perhaps, many years later, between her and someone looking at this image, discovering something of their own within it.
I like that moment when the eye takes its time. When it doesn’t simply pass over an image, but lingers. When it discovers something new, or returns to something it noticed before. Perhaps the image itself hasn’t changed at all. Perhaps only what we see in it has changed.
I took this photograph in Nepal in 2012. I know what moved me to press the shutter back then. But what you see in it may be something entirely different. Because a photograph doesn’t end when I press the shutter. It begins when someone else looks at it.
You can follow Paul’s work on Instagram @projekt.farblosigkeit or at paul-photography.jimdofree.com