A photographer and curator from Nepal, NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati is known for her documentary and archival work. She is a co-founder of the photography platform photo.circle and its ventures, the digital historical archive Nepal Picture Library (NPL) and the photography festival Photo Kathmandu.

Born in Kathmandu, Kakshapati received a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Studio Art (2005) from Mount Holyoke College and studied documentary photography at the SALT Institute of Documentary Studies, both in the United States. She co-founded photo.circle with Bhushan Shilpakar in 2007, inspired by and with help from the Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam. She has since actively shaped and organised the exhibitions, publications, workshops and other projects of photo.circle. 

Kakshapati’s documentary work focuses on a range of political issues, including disappearances during the Nepalese civil war (The Long Wait for Justice, 2009–10), ethnic and national identity (Being Nepali, 2010–), and ecological disruption (A Weathered People, 2010). With Diwas Raja KC, Kakshapati co-curated The Public Life of Women (2018) for NPL’s Feminist Memory Project; the book culminating from this exhibition won the 2023 Photography Catalog of the Year award at the Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards. 

Kakshapati has served as director of Film South Asia and as member of several documentary film and photojournalism selection committees, including for World Press Photo and Invisible Photographer Asia. At the time of writing, she lives and works in Kathmandu.