Nepal’s Sacred Art
Do you know that peculiar happy feeling when you discover photos of something you forgot you shot long time ago? Well, this is what happened to me while unarchiving and looking at the photos I took in Nepal back in 2018. I had forgotten I visited several Buddhist monasteries in the Himalaya mountain, but as soon as I saw the pictures, I had a flashback of what I felt back when I took them: a heartfelt curiosity mixed with astonishment.
I have never seen anything like the art in Nepal’s sacred mountain monasteries, neither am I familiar with the symbolism behind the images here. There must be other such places across India and Tibet. The pictures in this article come from unnamed Buddhist and Hindu temples in Nepal. Most of the time, I shot them in very low light and without a tripod. I stopped breathing and tried to be as still as I could.
Now, try to come back with me to the moment these very photos were taken. Imagine this. The mother of mountains, The Himalaya, surrounding you with its wild and untamed beauty. It’s cold, snowy and it’s about 4000m of altitude. Every so often, among these heights you find villages with native Sherpa inhabitants. And in some of these villages, there are sacred Nepali Buddhist monasteries where few monks live. These places are so remote and little visited that you can almost hear your own heartbeat in the silence inside. As you come in, your eyes need to adjust to the darkness, because there’s no electricity and little light comes through the small windows. You can see the vapor of your own breath in the dark and cold. You can feel the smell of wood and incense. Finally, when your eyes adapt to the dark, the most peculiar Buddhist art takes shape in front of you. So, there you are, a human from a foreign culture facing these remarkable, colorful walls painted in ancient times by Buddhist monks. Time stops. And nothing else exists except your heartbeat in this very moment.
Buddhist Temples Art
Hindu Sculpture Art
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