Campaign Launch! “From the Eyes of Buddha” Documentary

Screening camp by the Tilganga Eye Institute, Kathmandu, Nepal. Photograph by Joel Addams

KATHMANDU, NEPAL

Check out the trailer on YouTube

I am excited to announce that the trailer has been made for my documentary project, “From the Eyes of Buddha,” and we are launching a fundraiser campaign on Kickstarter.com (visit the YouTube link currently) to raise the funds so we can followup with recipients of cornea transplants in their own homes to see them in their productive lives of farming, tending water buffalo, and continuing their education.  The campaign end April 27, 2012 at 7 p.m.  You can donate as little as $1 and there are sweet rewards for $10 or more!

I was initially interested in this project when I went to the Tilganga Eye Institute in 2006 and wrote an 80-page book on developing an eye banking system in developing countries.  The Nepal Eye Bank managers were fabulous to work with, and they were great again when I showed up with a couple of video cameras in July 2011 to start filming.  We followed the corneas that were extracted on the funeral pyres in the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu into a special solution and then into the recipients in surgery.  One recipient was a perfectly healthy girl from the Indian border who became progressively blind during her youth.  This happened from a genetic problem, and her education, ability to help her family, and marriage prospects (a major part of the Nepali culture) were finished…until she made her way to Kathmandu and the Tilganga Eye Institute.  We filmed her second surgery, but now we need to return to see her new productive life at home, thanks to brave donor families and innovative Eye Bank personnel and skilled Nepali surgeons.

This is a story of changing and a story of hope.  Join us in the campaign by supporting for as little as $10 or simply repost the campaign on your Facebook, Twitter account, or personal blog (the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjMUy6mmAUk&feature=plcp).  Any exposure will help!  Thanks for your interest.

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New Portfolio: “International Portraits” in Black and White

"Man at Screening Camp" Kathmandu, Nepal. © Joel Addams

Even though there are many, many countries left to visit, I began putting together a portfolio of black and white portraits that I have taken since 2006 from Peru, Nepal, Egypt, Morocco, and a few other countries.

When I first showed in an exhibit or two in 2006, one fellow participant looked at a framed 16 x 24″ print of a Hindu man reading in the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, and said, “Who’s gonna buy that?”  I thought the person missed the point entirely and quite obviously.  While this subject should be dedicated to a blog of its own, not all photographs are made for commercial purposes.  I firmly believe that the photographs that you need to take and like to take will find ways of doing things that you have not imagined.  Perhaps for some, they are the grounding in their lives that remind them that not all that glitters is gold and that their integrity as a photographer can be preserved in the images that they know resonates with them.

I feel that this is what black and white photography is for me and this is what international portraits do for me.  I hope you enjoy a new portfolio of black images of people from around the world.

"A Kiterunner" Kathmandu, Nepal. © Joel Addams

Twitter: joeladdamsphoto

Website: www.joeladdams.com

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