After a 40-year career as a dentist, Barry Shaffer was restless. Ready to start cutting back on hours at his practice, he wanted to find something meaningful. Little did he know he’d find that meaning in photography and a tiny Himalayan kingdom on the other side of the world.
The California resident had taken up photography as a hobby in the 1990s and, as someone with a keen eye and deft fingers, it was no surprise that he showed promise.
“The skills involved in dentistry and in photography are actually very similar,” Barry explains.
In 2000, he began to scale back on dentistry and two years later, Barry enrolled full-time in the professional photography program at Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara. “I was 52. My classmates were 18 to 20—but it worked better than I ever imagined.”
During that period, he heard a speech by the renowned Indo-Tibetan Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, at the Telluride Mountain Film Festival. “He described a very pure Buddhist culture amongst the beautiful mountains and valleys of the Himalayas. He made it sound like a kind of Shangri-La,” Barry says.
Ten months later Barry and his wife, Barbara, found themselves in Bhutan, camping and trekking to the most remote parts. “I was blown away by the clean air and gorgeous mountain views, which have a spiritual quality, but also by the people. I was struck by how happy they were. We might think they have very little, but there is such joy among them. It made me think that it’s the complications of life that make it such a hassle.”
The couple has embarked on three trips to Bhutan, where they’ve been embraced by the locals and the government. Barry has compiled his work in a fine-art photography book, Echoes of Bhutan, and here he expounds on some of his favorite shots.
All proceeds from sales of Echoes of Bhutan will benefit the Tarayana Foundation, established by the Queen Mother of Bhutan, to support improvements to the most rural communities. The book can be purchased at barryshafferphotography.com.
Barry’s work will be on display through July at USC’s School of Gerontology. The project, “Quiet Heroes ~ Over 80,” exhibits black and white photographs that spotlight aging and immigration.
