Nepal is calling me back. Focusing mostly on people, this series of monochrome photographs from Nepal covers a range from life in small villages to urban life in historic Bhaktapur. Beyond the designated cultural heritage district in Bhaktapur is a maze of narrow alleys where people live. Therein lies the true spirit of Bhaktapur. The next section of the book is a portrait of Khokana village in Kathmandu Valley, where I have returned annually, wandering the streets and photographing the people. Far away lie the villages in the foothills of the Annapurna Mountains. In some instances, these villages are home to only a few hundred people. The old stone houses typically have no running water and only some have electricity. The footpaths winding through the villages are too narrow for cars so the villages are pleasantly quiet. Finally, the neighborhoods near Durbar Square in Kathmandu adhere to a simpler way of life such as the early-morning open-air Asan market. These four widely diverse areas of Nepal come together for me as a photographer through the medium of the people. My goal in Nepal Is Calling: ネパールからのたより is to create a collective portrait, with many individual images woven into a whole piece with various cultural elements. Nepal is calling me back.

D.J. Hinman is an amateur devotee of black-and-white film photography. After studying photography at the International Center for Photography in New York in the late 1990s, he has honed his skills in photography in New York, Japan, and East and Southeast Asia. He believes that he should give free rein to his inner photographer's voice and follow wherever his camera leads. He shoots exclusively in black-and-white, develops his own film, and prints the photographs himself in the darkroom on silver-gelatin paper. A transplanted Midwesterner via New York, D. J. Hinman has lived in Tokyo for 19 years. During that time, he has mounted 11 solo photography exhibits. "Nepal is Calling" is his second book.