I have been photographing Nepal for 40 years since arriving here as a Peace Corps village water systems volunteer in 1975. After that first visit, I returned to the country in the mid-80s, and spent most of the following five years walking around Nepal, working with a four-by-five inch format view camera. At the time, I felt that I was documenting a time and a way of life that was slipping inexorably into the past.

The large film negatives from the tripod-mounted camera reveal a ritualized formality of the picture-making process. The static set-up placed me in the midst of village life; water buffaloes, goats and curious children brushed past, sometimes bumping the tripod legs. The camera often recorded people who had carefully prepared to project an image of themselves they wished others to see. The photographs show our mutual awareness of one another, villager and visitor. Frequently, the camera captured not only people in their context, but also the warmth of friendship rekindled and past experiences recalled, as village friends from my previous visits stood before the lens.

Looking back now, these photographs are documents of an earlier Nepal, one that has since been transformed by three decades of social and political changes brought on by phenomena such as new motorable roads, infusion of overseas development aid, a 10-year conflict, and remittance sent home by the millions of Nepalis living abroad, among many other things.