Jasper — the slide show capital of Canada. Or so it may appear, for between William Jans’ photographic tales of adventure on two continents and former Jasperites presenting their charitable efforts in Africa, many times in the recent past has the local public been invited to witness the tales of people with laser pointers and large projectors.

This weekend, however, the presenter who will grace the Activity Centre has a unique twist to his program. Brian Harris, a Vancouver based photographer, will be in town Saturday to present his “Beauty and Transformation” show — a show that features the work of SEVA, a Canadian charity working to prevent blindness in Tibet, Nepal and Northern India.

“One of the taglines of SEVA is compassion in action,” said Harris from his Vancouver office. “I’ve had someone tell me that I should have called my show ‘Extreme Compassion’ — in a certain way, this show is about the antithesis of those extreme elements in our world.”

Harris spent more than five months in Asia, taking tens of thousands of photos for this show, which he claims contains the best work he has done in his career. For Harris, whose images have captured prominent photography awards at the Banff Mountain Festivals and have been published in books and calendars, that’s saying something.

There was a combination of factors that made the trip so special, Harris said.

“First of all, the length of time was very important. Usually, I’d always be on the go, but we were able to settle into three places and that meant that I could go out every day and shoot. The more time you have to craft your work, the more likely it is that it will be polished.”

Another major difference was that Harris finally made the conversion from film to digital images, allowing the photographer to take more risks, he said.

“That was a revolutionary experience for me. Virtually all creative acitivities occur in real time, except for film photography, but now it creates a feedback loop, which is crucial to the process.”

The other impact of the switch was in the sheer volume of images Harris was able to capture.

“Usually I would take about 4,000 pictures when I was using film. During this last trip I took 20,000. I could experiment and risk shooting something because there was no risk.” The Beauty and Transformation show follows Harris’ journey to a hospital for the blind, profiles a small community and the holy man they venerate, gets behind the scenes at a progressive tea estate in Northern India where working conditions and fair trade pricing come before profit margins and also follows in the footsteps of Cynthia Hunt as she travels through the remote mountains of Ladakh, empowering village women and providing crucial literacy training.

Harris had a pretty good idea of where he was going before he left Canada, but sometimes, the road provides a surprise. This was certainly the case as Harris and his wife learned of the overthrow of democracy by the King of Nepal as they rode in a taxi to the Vancouver airport. A planned stop to profile a SEVA project in the troubled Himalayan country was called off, leaving Harris with some extra time in India. While staying at a guesthouse in New Delhi, he met the owner of the tea estate that he would eventually travel to and document for the show.

The four segments of the show all tell their own story, but Harris believes that there is a simple thread connecting the entire presentation together, from the first frame to the last.

“All these people are involved in service, in one way or another,” he said. “At the basis of the most profound service is a spritual root. These stories all deal with people who are using beauty to transform themselves, which is exactly what SEVA does.”

The concepts of beauty, transformation and spirituality have been highly influential in Harris’ life. 

“Since I was in my late teens, I have had a strong interest in spiritual traditions and traditional cultures,” he said. His first trip overseas took him to Europe, but this was no typical intinerary.

“I had a particular interest. I went to Mount Athos in Greece and visited the monastery, I went to Jerusalem to spend time in the mosques.”

Ever since, that purposeful sensibility has defined Harris’ travel.

“My wife once said to me, why can’t we ever go on a regular holiday,” he recalled with a laugh. “Well, that just has never appealed to me. I need to do something. It needs to have a purpose.”

For a while, that purpose took him down the path of monastic Buddhism. While still a practicing Buddhist, Harris spent more than ten years living and working closely with a Thai monk.

“It was a semi-monastic lifestyle, but after ten years that experience was quite dry. I had to either shit or get off the pot — which in my case meant either becoming  a monk, or moving on.”

Harris moved on, and soon afterwards traveled to Asia for the first time. He’s been working for SEVA as a photographer and fundraiser since that time. This most recent voyage was his seventh trip to Asia. It might be a more familiar destination, but Harris finds it no less fascinating than the first time he arrived.

“I’m more informed about the subject matter now, and the photography is slightly more sophisticated as a result.”

To have a look, check out Harris’s show at the Activity Centre on Saturday (May 20). Tickets are $12 at the door and the show starts at 7:30 p.m.