Portraits from Sempung

Sempung is a small village in Nepal, in the Arun valley, at the base of Makalu (8462 m), on the borders of Tibet, out of the world. The first time I visited this village was in 2017. There was no road to reach the village and I had to hike for several hours along the shoulder of the mountain. All along the path there were small terraces, dug by the hands of men and women, cultivated with cardamom. Once we reached the village, a local teacher in a very broken English told me that children up to 5 years had never met a Westerner. I was very impressed by this statement. In the age of globalization, speed and inter-connection, these children and probably most of the villagers had never got to know a Westerner! Did I really get to the end of the world?   I then returned in November 2018 to shoot a documentary and see with some regret that I was witnessing an epochal change for these people: the construction of the road that will cross the valley of the Arun and connect Nepal to Tibet is already arrived at the hedge of the village of Sempung, tearing it out of its isolation. Access to the world! Rationally I am happy with this change because the village will have access more easily to basic services - such as reaching a hospital - but at the same time I feel a bit nostalgic about imagining the people of Sempung inevitably changing and slowly conforming to our world. Therefore losing their “innocence”. These images are a tribute to these people. A tribute to the truth of their looks, to the signs carved on their tobacco-colored skin that for me are like a code of a secret world that, a little selfishly, I would never change.