On Everest
Sasha Bezzubov
(2016-2024)
On Everest is a series of portraits and landscapes made in Nepal during several treks in the Everest region between 2016 and 2024.
When I started hiking in Nepal, one of the first things I noticed were the porters. Some of the porters are familiar to westerners – they carry the equipment and supplies needed for trekking and mountaineering expeditions. These porters are paid a small wage by the trekking companies, but depend largely on tips. They are motivated by the possibility of ascending the ranks to become cooks, guides and trip organizers. Their labor is difficult and dangerous, yet somewhat regulated. For instance, the weight these porters carry is limited to 30 kilos (66 lbs.). At least in theory, this work can provide a chance at upward mobility in a region with little economic opportunity.
The second group - commercial porters - are the porters documented in this project. Usually, commercial porters do not have the education or opportunity to move up through the ranks, nor do they have any worker protections. These porters carry the supplies needed for the lodges that cater to trekkers, from crates of beer to sheets of plywood. Their loads range from an excruciating 60 - 140 kilos (132 - 300 lbs.), sometimes as much as twice their weight. Because they get paid by weight, they are incentivized to carry as much as possible. To save the little money they make, they economize on meals and often share a single bed between two-three people. As altitudes rise, so do the prices, and even these sparse accommodations become increasingly costly. The work is physically demanding even outside of the weight they carry, and they are often subject to respiratory infections, altitude sickness, hypothermia and chronic disability.
This project builds on my photographic work on tourism and tourist populations in the developing world, starting in 1997 with The Gringo Project. Most of my previous work involves documenting travelers themselves, but in On Everest the traveler's presence is implied through the portraits of porters and the things they carry. Everything they carry - whether toilet paper, mattresses or building materials - is ultimately for the trekkers. On Everest, this harsh labor was happening right alongside me, on the same trails I was hiking, in front of the thousands of trekkers who come to Nepal to hike in the most spectacular mountains in the word. Being a tourist is always full of contradictions and hypocrisies, but those conflicts can often be temporarily shelved for the sake of leisure and rest. The labor behind tourism is usually hidden, with much effort, to provide a kind of seamless enjoyment for the tourist. On Everest, it is impossible not to see the individuals doing this work. Their hardship is laid bare in the sublime mountains of the Himalayas and it is this very labor that makes these exalted adventures possible.
we are the kings and queens of narnia
Sasha Bezzubov
2010 - 2024
When our son Niko was two months old, we went to Costa Rica. We carried him in a backpack, close to us. We went to the Caribbean coast, but the hurricane season was in full swing, so we changed our plans and took a twelve hour bus ride to the Pacific coast. It was tricky to travel with an infant, but the locals, seeing how far we had come with a newborn, were extra helpful and somehow we made the best of it. When Niko turned three we decided it was time to go on a long hike. That winter we went to a volcanic island in Nicaragua and spent a week walking around its periphery. My wife Jessica carried Niko in a backpack and I carried everything else, which consisted mostly of a massive bag of Diapers.
Walking all day has the effect of reducing everything to the very basic and elemental. Where will you sleep? What will you eat? How long is the walk that day? How challenging is the terrain? When life becomes this simple you tune everything nonessential out and just concentrate on a task at hand. Your daily routine becomes how to satisfy some basic but vital necessities, and you are too tired to think of much beyond that. It’s a respite from so many tasks, and thoughts, and confusions of daily life. It's like the classic Zen story, about when a student asks his teacher, “What is enlightenment?” and the master replied, “When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep.” Sometimes neither is possible, so you talk about eating and sleeping and fantasize about all sorts of luxuries unattainable at the moment. And when you finally arrive at a place where those luxuries are available, you’re flooded with a great sense of appreciation.
We walked from one village to the next, knowing there would be some place to stay, but having no idea how it would be or what it would look like. Each day was a complete discovery and we all fell into a kind of rhythmic trance. Niko hung in the back and pointed at things he saw, made approving sounds and sometimes even said things. Each day we improvised. There were no cribs, all the beds were high off the floor and the floors were hard tile or cement. One night we woke up to a scream in the middle of the night. Niko had rolled off the bed and fell onto the hard tile floor, surprising himself and us. The following night we made a platform of pillows around the bed and from then on we collected him from the floor each morning.
And so, we traveled as a family, the three of us, mostly to places where we could walk for days, sometimes weeks on end. This became our annual or semi-annual ritual. During those weeks we became very close and shared such intimacy that I cannot imagine life, or family life, without it. There’s nothing more intimate than becoming hungry together and knowing that you need to cross this hill and walk for another 5 kilometers before someone is kind enough to cook for you. Or talking for days on end about blisters that won’t heal. Or riffing on some silly joke over and over as you walk through the Spanish countryside. Traveling like this and walking was something Jessica and I had done as a couple before becoming parents, but we also wanted to share this with Niko, to make it a part of his world.
When Niko was six we were in Mexico, walking in the Oaxacan mountains, crossing countless streams. At first, we stopped at each stream and removed our shoes and held them in our hands as we crossed. We soon tired of this pointlessness, so we just left our shoes on and let our feet get wet. This was not supposed to be a very long or arduous walk, but as sometimes happens, the farther we walked the more we wanted to keep going. We knew this path was leading somewhere and somewhere along the way, the advantages of turning around and walking all the way back, seemed to recede. We had been reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe out loud to each other in bed for days and on this adventure, we imagined ourselves transported into our own magic kingdom. At some point during this hike, maybe when we needed some extra encouragement, we put our hands together and came up with the chant, “we are the kings and queens of narnia”. This became our little pact and battle cry.
This year Niko turned fifteen. He has now traveled to more than a dozen countries and has hiked over a thousand miles in Europe, Central America, Asia and the US. Being a teenager, I don’t know how much longer he will be interested or willing to travel with us. Whereas when he started to hike we had to walk short days in order not to overburden him, he can now easily run past us, wait at the top of the hill and make it seem completely effortless. During our last hike he said, in his sweet way and careful of our feelings, that it’s not that he doesn’t want to keep hiking, but next time he may not want to hike for an entire 2 or 3 weeks and may want to do other things instead. So this transition seems like the right time to close this chapter.
The photographs in The Beatles Ashram were made at the site of the former Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Ashram in Rishikesh, India. After The Beatles visit in 1968 – they were briefly Maharishi’s disciples – the exodus among young people from the West to India in search of spiritual enlightenment began in earnest. The Ashram was abandoned in 1997 and now the site, that formerly housed hundreds of students, numerous celebrities, and was central to introducing the West to India’s spirituality, is being slowly consumed and overtaken by the surrounding forest and the workings of time.
The portraits in Expats and Natives were made in small-scale tourist destinations of the developing world -- islands in Thailand, surfing villages in Nicaragua, coastal towns in Mexico. We traveled to these destinations in search of natural beauty, indigenous culture and respite from the urban pace – irresistible notions inherited from centuries of storytelling, photographs and advertising.
In these areas, where there is seemingly little interaction between tourists and locals, we noticed a significant population of mixed families— travelers who stayed and became expats, living with their local wives (or less frequently, husbands) and raising a family in a new culture. We found westerners who had come for similar reasons as us, drawn by the exotic or the escape but who had chosen to remain, and locals who had found a different future outside of their culture. These families came together as a consequence of tourism, a new manifestation of the complicated mixing of cultures that began along trade routes and continues through flows of capital and travel.
As the largest industry in the world, it is often through tourism that the cultures of the developed and the developing worlds meet. These families suggest the layered history and unknown futures of these relationships formed in the intersection of two worlds.
The Gringo Project
Between 1997 and 2003 I traveled to many developing countries in Central and South America, North Africa and Asia to make portraits of Western travelers. I was looking for both an escape from the West and a search for its alternative. However, whether I was in the remote Himalayas or the jungles of the Amazon, I found that the West was everywhere: in fast food restaurants, name brand products, movies, and the Western travelers themselves. Where are these people from? What brings them there? How is the place and the traveler altered by this exchange? Seeing how ubiquitous traveling has become, I decided it was a phenomenon worth addressing.
These portraits are set in places that are perceived to be unchanged by the modern age. The search for an untainted past is one of the reasons we travel there. We are, however, another link in a long chain of explorers, merchants, missionaries, and conquerors that have left an impact on these cultures. This conflicts with the noble aspirations that guide the traveler - the desire to learn through encounters with the unexpected. How does travel - an act of freedom - relate to the history of colonialism, of which it is a by-product?
All the photographs in this series are full-length portraits. There is both tension and ease in the way the traveler and the setting coexist. This work addresses the paradox of traveling as being both personally sublime and culturally profane. These portraits act as signposts; all the ideas are reduced to a simple record of people in a place where they don’t belong. I believe this work is significant not only because it is a record of travelers all over the world, but it also reverses the old discourse on us and them. It presents a neglected aspect of our culture in its contact with the mythical opposites of the Other.
Nowadays, an unlikely mix of locals and foreigners coexist in this forest, often with great tension. There are Gabonese villagers and indigenous Pygmies, migrant workers from neighboring countries, European technicians working in extracting industries, Chinese laborers, drug tourists, and a motley crew of conservationists, scientists, activists that come together in resource rich regions of the developing world.
This forest is crisscrossed by logging roads that cut deep into the interior. The dust created in the wake of passing trucks, which cart enormous trees to the port, covers everything in sight. The rainforest turns deep red as the trucks leave behind clouds of dust. This dust settles on plants, smothering them and transforming their natural greens with an industrial concoction of red glow. The foliage flanking these roads becomes a witness to this exploitation.
Sad Tropics is a series of portraits of foreigners and locals who coexist in this threatened environment: a microcosm of global trade and its ruinous effects. Also, running through this series (and anchoring its various layers of record and meaning) are pictures of dust - a constant presence, insidious reminder, and symbol of our destructive relationship with nature.
Facts on the Ground
Albedo Zone
Albedo Zone addresses questions of climate change through a series of black and white photographs that deal with the “Albedo effect”. The series consists of very light images of ice, and very dark images of water, making apparent the transformation of ice from an element that cools the planet into one that warms it. To create these photographs I used a large format camera and the “Zone System”, a photographic technique invented and refined by the mid-century American photographer Ansel Adams. This work was made in Alaska, a part of the world where global warming and thawing are at their extreme. Alaska, as well as many Arctic regions and Antarctica contain massive volumes of water in the form of glaciers and sea ice. As the glaciers continue to melt, the rising sea levels may spell disaster for half of the world’s population that lives near the coast.
The photographs in the Wildfire series were made in California from 2003 to 2007. The work began as part of a larger project titled Things Fall Apart (2001-2008), which took me to different parts of the world to make landscape photographs in the aftermath of hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. Wildfire was published by Nazraeli Press in 2009 with an introduction by the writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben.
Things Fall Apart
“It is thus that we are warned at each step of our nothingness, man goes to meditate on the ruins of emptiness, he forgets that he himself is a ruin still more unsteady, and that he will fall before these remains do.” - Chateaubriand
Looking at ruins has a long cultural history, particularly in poetry and painting. Traditionally, the contemplation of ruins signified the contemplation of mortality – both of the society and of the self. Starting in the 17th century, the Grand Tourists visited the ruins of former civilizations to be reminded that even the mightiest of empires would eventually become “time’s shipwreck”. If the seemingly indestructible stone buildings of ancient Rome succumbed to armies, natural disasters and decay, why wouldn’t they? Witnessing the destruction of cities and the wreckage of our built enviornments, we too are reminded that we, and everything we’ve created, are transitory and impermanent.
As the name indicates, a natural disaster is a normal occurrence, a standard way that the earth regulates itself. However, because of our unprecedented impact on the environment, these events have become catastrophically severe, frequent and deadly. As the systems that cause the earth to warm continue to affect each other, the feedback loops they create may render the decline irreversible. The presence of the ruins left in the wake of these disasters may become less of an exception than the rule.
Things Fall Apart is a series of photographs of destruction caused by natural disasters in India, the US, Indonesia and Thailand. Using the genre of landscape photography, a tradition born with and used to celebrate industrial expansion, these photographs evidence the fragility of the man-made as it is transformed into dreamscapes of apocalyptic proportions. I derive a guilty pleasure from witnessing and representing ruins. Images of destruction are beautiful because there is pleasure in knowing a kind of truth, the truth of fragility and impermanence. But there is suffering buried in these images, the suffering of others, and by extension, of ourselves.
The photographs in Not-Self Portraits attempt to represent - through the genre of the photographic portrait - the invisible actions of mental, spiritual and physical transformation.
Not-Self Portraits are portraits made while I was doing a Buddhist meditation practice. I sit, remaining as still as I possibly can, for one hour. During these hour-long exposures the camera records the accumulation of my stillness, and my movements. A single candle - often utilized in meditation practice as an object of concentration - is used as my only lighting equipment. Physical stillness is considered very important in photography. Its absence causes a motion blur, a faulty, imperfect exposure. This was a primary obstacle photography had to overcome in its early days in order to become the dominant form of representation. Daguerre, one of photography’s inventors, bemoaned the fact that photography, because of its slow speed, would never be able to make portraits a practical reality. Physical stillness is also considered fundamental to meditation as it leads to mental stillness, which in turn, leads to realization. Meditation is a practice of stilling the body and mind in order to understand their nature and the problematic notion of “self”. The Buddhist notion of Not-Self (Anatta), addresses the fact that self doesn’t exist in the way we generally experience it, its realization is said to lead to enlightenment. Meditation masters are reputed to be able to remain perfectly still for hours, even, days at a time, and this skill is one of the contributing factors to their myth as realized beings. If stillness is an indication of realization, these portraits are a way of measuring inner realization, a kind of enlightenment barometer.
