PHOTOGRAPHER’S PORTFOLIO : Faces of Asia

Bernard Mendoza, a British-born commercial photographer who lives in Beverly Hills, had an unfulfilled ambition.

“I was a flower child in the 1960s,” he confesses, “and I always wanted to go to Tibet and contemplate my navel.”

Instead, Mendoza built a career that has included such clients as Chanel perfume and Shell oil companies. But when it came time for Mendoza and his wife, Marilyn, to plan a trip to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, Asian ideas crept back into their heads. And so for six weeks, ending in January, the two traveled through China, Thailand, Nepal and India.

Mendoza brought along a 35-millimeter camera and found himself delighting in photography without models and studios. Standing a shade above 6 feet, 6 inches tall, alongside his 5-foot-2 wife, he had little trouble getting anyone’s attention.

“We could have been from Mars,” says Mendoza.

Two months after the journey, he calls the holiday “the most remarkable, moving, stimulating, inspiring and spiritual experience. I didn’t realize what effect it would have on me. Now I’m ready to go again.”