January 19, 2006

By Diane Chiddister

Mansir Petrie is showing photographs of his travels around Bhutan in an exhibit at the Little Art Theatre. The show runs through Feb. 18.

A land of extreme beauty and complexity, the Himalayan country of Bhutan is a mystery to most Americans. But Yellow Springers may now see an intimate glimpse of Bhutan in the lobby of the Little Art Theatre, where photographs by Mansir Petrie are on exhibit.

A 1995 graduate of Yellow Springs High School who now lives in Washington, D.C., Petrie took the photos while working in Bhutan as a consultant to the Bhutanese government for three months in 2004 and one month in 2005. The exhibit, “Touching the Thunder Dragon: up-close portraits of my time in Bhutan,” continues through Feb. 18.

The photos show images exotic to this culture, including prayer flags whipping in the winds, breathtaking mountain landscapes and brightly painted Buddhist temples. But most of all, the photos show people, close-ups of Bhutanese adults and children who seem amazingly at ease in front of the camera, and with the photographer behind it.

Petrie said he loves people, and that caring for humanity seems to shine through the photos. The photos illustrate the universality of human experience, including the joy and mischief of Bhutanese children in traditional dress as they transform prayer wheels into merry-go-rounds, and the dignity and devotion of women going to temple.

A lifelong lover of travel who has also lived in Kenya and China, Petrie said for many years he resisted taking photos of the people he met on his journeys. He didn’t want to objectify them, he said, or to distance himself with the camera. But he discovered that he could feel good about taking photos if he got to know the people before taking their pictures, and he also ended up with new friends, whose stories he loves telling.

The person who most encouraged him to photograph people was his father, Petrie said, and as well as honoring his Bhutanese friends, the exhibit honors his father. The exhibit is in memory of Garner “Mack” Petrie, who died last June.

Mansir Petrie said he feels his father’s influence in so many ways, from his 35-mm camera, which used to be his father’s, to the memories of the trips they took together. A philosophy teacher with a keen curiosity, his father made a wonderful traveling companion, Petrie said. They traveled together to Nepal, which Mack Petrie loved, and had planned that their next trip would be to Bhutan, Mansir Petrie said.

“He was the best person to travel with,” Petrie said. “He knew everything.”

But after Mack Petrie died in a car accident, Mansir Petrie instead brought his father’s ashes to Bhutan. A Bhutanese friend asked a monk to bless a prayer flag, Petrie said, and taught him a Buddhist ritual of planting the blessed flag for a deceased loved one. The Bhutanese plant the flags on mountain peaks or beside rivers, he said, so that the prayers for the loved ones are carried by water or wind. He planted his father’s flag on a peak in the midst of about 100 other flags, he said, and doing so helped his own healing.

Petrie lived in Bhutan as a consultant for the World Foundation for Environment and Development (WFED), for which he worked for two years. In his job Petrie and his boss worked with the Bhutanese government in order to manage the pace of scientific development in the country and to ensure that any research benefits the Bhutanese people in some way, Petrie said.

Scientific researchers are especially interested in Bhutan because it is so undeveloped compared to other Himalayan countries, having experienced little tourism since it opened a road to India in 1960. Bhutan includes both high mountain peaks and flat lowlands, and as such contains a variety of unspoiled areas of biodiversity of keen interest to scientists and corporations worldwide, he said.

While the government seems to have managed the challenge of tourism and research wisely so far, it faces enormous challenges, Petrie said. The Bhutanese people try to balance following their traditional ways while also learning about and using new technology, he said. A Bhutanese child in traditional dress might be using a cell phone, Petrie said, or a teenager might be sending e-mail while preparing to make an offering to a local deity with his grandmother.

Petrie did his best to capture in his photos the complexity and humanity of the Bhutanese people he grew to love, he said. The Little Art exhibit is his first public display of his work, and he hopes to follow it with others.

He recently left his job with WFED and hopes to pursue his dream of traveling the world as a photojournalist, Petrie said, and to bring back photos and stories of people and places far away, just as he has brought the people of Bhutan to Yellow Springs.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com