Nepal Remembered: Historical Images from Dirgha Man and Ganesh Man Chitrakar

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Nepal Remembered contains a previously unpublished collection of images by Dirgha Man Chitrakar (1877–1951) and Ganesh Man Chitrakar (1916–1985), court artists and photographers employed to record significant historical moments of political and cultural change during the reclusive Shah and Rana regimes. Their direct descendent, art historian Cristeena, with her brother Swaraj Man and their father Kiran Man Chitraker, have selected a wide array of photographs that span a hundred years of diplomatic missions royal receptions, elite portraits, architectural masterpieces, cultural ceremonies and landscapes of everyday life. This book remembers an era that has already gone, revealed in photographs from the Chitrakars’ unique insider perspective, and arranged with an erudite commentary on Nepal’s political, social and artistic history of the time.

Cristeena Chitrakar, the main author of the book, contributed two chapters and managed the photo selection and research for the captions with her brother Swaraj Man. An art historian based in Kathmandu, Cristeena is the daughter of Kiran Man. She continues the family tradition of involvement in the arts, but as an academic and researcher rather than an artist like her great grandfather Dirgha Man and grandfather Ganesh Man Chitrakar. Cristeena has a Bachelor’s degree from Bard College in the USA, a Master’s from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and has worked at the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian in Washington DC. She has curated exhibitions around the world portraying Nepal’s history, notably at the East West Center in Hawaii, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna Austria and an open exhibition for the Pokhara Metropolitan City in Nepal. Cristeena is currently developing the Lumbini Museum in Nepal. Other chapters were contributed by Mark Watson and David Gellner; Lisa Choegyal was the overall editor.