The walkways, ravines and peaks of the Himalayas, Tibet and Swiss Alps form the backdrop for "On the Mountain Path," the latest photographic exhibition by Nao Tsuda at Gallery 916.
Tsuda's sizeable photographs show one man's appreciation for landscapes' resilience to inconstant climate and changing ways of life — from the Valais region of Switzerland ("Noah") and the Chomolhari trek in Bhutan ("Reborn (Scene 3)"), to the Philippine island of Luzon ("Puhu nin Amukaw," the Aeta name meaning "The Heart of Banana") and up through the massive gray rock of Mount Pinatubo, a volcano that became one of modern history's largest natural disasters when it erupted in 1991.
Born in Kobe in 1976, Tsuda repeatedly walks across landscapes to take photographs, relating each path he takes with his theme of photography's relationship with time. For the most part, he sets out unaided by maps or other tools of navigation, instead using old tracks as guides. These routes, formed by past walkers and renegotiated by locals, echo the indigenous peoples who reside there, such as those living along the Chomolhari trek that, with its peak sitting on the border between Bhutan and Tibet, has managed to survive not only shifting geography and cultures but also political unrest.