Portrait of Dilli Phuyel sitting in his family's apartment located just off of East Colfax Avenue in Denver, CO.

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The Nepal on East Colfax

David Thatcher | Colorado, United States

Since 2008, almost 80,000 Bhutanese have been resettled across the U.S. from refugee camps in Nepal. They had been languishing there for almost two decades following an ethnic cleansing policy instituted by Bhutan's ruling Buddhist elite, which forced the Nepali speaking Hindu population to flee into Nepal. Denver, Colorado has seen a large Bhutanese community resettled in the community of East Colfax. In sprawling rundown apartment complexes they struggle to maintain their culture, find work, and integrate into society. The Bhutanese refugees have experienced a high rate of suicide in the U.S., almost two times the national average though on par with suicide rates back in the camps. Yet in spite of the struggles, they tirelessly seek to integrate their culture, rituals, and religious beliefs into their new lives in Denver. This exhibit is a foray into that culture as it plays out in the dilapidated apartments of East Colfax Avenue.
 

Special thanks to Hillary Pragg at the Colorado State Office for Refugee Resettlement for introducing me to the wonderful members of the Bhutanese refugee community in Denver.

I was born in the shadows of mountains. Originally from Salt Lake City, UT, I now call Denver home. I have lived in 5 different countries and traveled to countless more, but somehow the peaks of the Rocky Mountains call me ever back. I am a documentary and editorial photographer. In a former life I spent a career in rights based non-profit work. The career took me into communities suffering from political oppression, conflict, and institutional poverty. What I learned from the work was that first, in this ever increasing globalized world we are more connected than we realize and if we are to act ethically we have a responsibility to understand and talk about these connections. The second thing I learned in my work, was that one of the greatest deprivations anyone can experience is the deprivation of voice. When the voice of an individual or community's is suppressed or their capacity to speak out diminished a great injustice has been served. So I came to photography out of a desire to find a way to highlight our connections and to create a vehicle, which could give a podium to the voiceless. It is my hope that my work conveys this for in the end photography is a product of relationship. It is a brief or long exchange between the person holding the camera and the person on the other side of it. Photography is a shared moment of creation.

 thatcher.dave@gmail.com

+1(801) 243-1832

www.dmthatcherphotography.com

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