you're a PhotograPher, austrian and
a woman. how did you end uP doing a
Project on the gurkhas?
Alex Schlacher: In 2009, I started a photo project on US police, ran with
various departments all over the South and Midwest and stayed in contact
with some of the individual officers afterwards. One of them, now Police
Chief of a Georgia PD, was a US Marine Colonel (reserves) and got deployed
to Afghanistan in order to train the local police. I was curious, asked to come
along and ended up embedded with his unit in Helmand Province in 2011.
While I was there, I met a few soldiers and officers from the Royal Gurkha
Rifles (one of 2 Gurkha infantry battalions in the British Army) and they
spontaneously invited me to ride along with them. The Gurkhas literally
took me in like a lost child and I was immediately fascinated by their dignity,
warmth as well as their stories from deployments and their background in
Nepal. Very quickly, I decided to do a project on them.
www.fragoutmag.com
