Giving Back Smiles : A Photographic Mission
Donation protected
Namaste,
My name is Sushil Babu Chhettri, I am a photographer, filmmaker, social worker, and educator here in Nepal.
Growing up as a homeless child in Kathmandu, I was intrigued by the foreigners who frequently photographed me and my friends on the street. What were these curious photos? What was their purpose? These photos whereabouts were and still are, unknown to me to this day.
As I entered my pre-teenage years in an orphanage home, I began borrowing cameras from various social workers and volunteers to take photos of my own. Often I took playful portraits capturing the daily lives of the other children in the orphanage. I was struck by the joy the other children had upon seeing their own photos, immediately falling in love with photography. Later, as this passion turned into a profession, I often thought of those photos taken of me and my friends back on the street, imagining what our reactions would have been, and what they would be if we saw them today. This was the inspiration behind "Giving Back Smiles", my new book i would like to publish.
Over the last twelve years, I have been photographing the daily lives of Nepalese people across the country, through earthquakes, floods, landslides, political turmoil, jubilant festivals, the good times and the bad. With this photobook, I wish to not only share their stories with the world, but also give back a smile to those captured in the publication. That is why the funds from this book will not only go to supporting me as a struggling artist (I recently lost my studio and the majority of my equipment, thanks Covid :-P) but will however help support the further printing and distribution costs of the books as a surprise gift to each and every person photographed as a subject in this publication. Some who will have never seen, or got a copy of their childhood portrait. Only with your help can I make this dream into a reality.
With the purchase of "Giving Back Smiles" you will not only be getting a pretty cool and unique photobook for yourself or a loved one, you will also be giving a very special gift to one of the many wonderful people I had the pleasure to photograph in this beautiful and chaotic place that also helped me grow as an artist.
The "Giving Smiles Back" book will be a high-quality A4 landscape hardback edition. The publication will have around 200 pages of various artistic content including around 200 images of children's smiles along with a further 200 family members' and adults' smiles. The smiles have been collected over various expeditions throughout many districts of Nepal and its diverse cultures and geographical locations.
I aim to get the photos in the book to as many of the featured children and adults in the book as possible. The smiles in the book have been collected from 2007 -2019, many of which might be their only childhood photo, which is why I feel it is quite a heartfelt gesture to return their smile back to the location I have recorded it; to them or a family member, otherwise finding out their current location is and deliver the book with their smile back if possible, which I believe many will be.
With your help, I hope to fundraise between now and the 15th of February, which would give me enough time to print the book and start my distribution expedition across Nepal at the end of March.
I hope you will join me in this ambitious undertaking and thank you kindly in advance. I will do my very best to update all donors through my social media pages when we locate and distribute the books to its subjects with before and after photos of the people's same smiles in a new time.
Dhhanyabaad.
(Thank you).
-Sushil Babu Chhetri
If you have any questions or want to support the project in any other ways between now ant the end of the project, please don't hesitate to contact me through any of my links below:
Email: [email redacted]
For further reading and media about my life and work in Nepal, please see the podcast and article links below:
Below is a sample of some of the photo's for the book.
Sindhupalchowk, Nepal.
Siraha, Nepal.
Baluwapati, Kavre, Nepal.
Baluwapati, Kavre, Nepal.
Bolgaun, Sindhupalchowk, Nepal.
Sinja, Jumla, Nepal.
Kathmandu, Nepal.
Bardia, Nepal.
Surkhet, Nepal.
Sindhupalchowk, Nepal.
Lumbini, Nepal.
Rautahat, Nepal.
Rautahat, Nepal.
Kalikot, Nepal.
Kathmandu, Nepal.
Fundraising team (3)
Sushil Babu Chhetri
Organizer
Concord, NH
Melissa Pratt
Beneficiary
Lauren Benz
Team member
Linda Harwood
Team member
