JULIE-ANNE DAVIES: Fascinated with Cultural traditions

My approach as a travel photographer is to move slowly, fuelled by an honest and deep inquisitiveness in the lives of those around me.

Everyone's eyes have a story to tell, and for that moment of shared interaction, however brief, we can feel a part of one another's worlds. A shared smile, a conversation, or even just gestures or laughter are moments of shared humanity. I deeply respect my subjects for allowing me into their world for those moments and feel a great responsibility to authentically portray the story behind their eyes. As a female photographer, and often a solo one at that, the women I encounter are almost always as intrigued by me as I am of them.

Despite our cultural differences, this often opens up a sense of connection based on our most elemental of traits, and perhaps is why I am drawn to document women as much as I do.

I am fascinated by their traditional roles, clothing, rituals, and lives, but I am even more intrigued to search for what makes us the same amidst all the outer differences. Over the last few years, I have been fortunate to travel on several occasions to the high altitude Himalayan region of Ladakh in far Northern India and to its remote outer reaches, specifically the narrow and ancient Indus River Aryan Valley and up onto the Changthang region of the Tibetan Plateau.

While there, I met and photographed many of the women of the 5000-year-old Brokpa Tribal community and the goat herding Changpa Nomads. The following images are portraits of these fascinating women.

JULIE-ANNE DAVIES