Photography And Tibet

Magnificent and mysterious, Tibet has been a source of fascination for outsiders for centuries, and its grand landscapes and vibrant culture have especially captivated photographers. But the country is both geographically and politically challenging, and access from the outside has never been easy. With this book, Clare Harris offers the first historical survey of photography in Tibet and the Himalayas, telling the intriguing stories of both Tibetans and foreigners who have attempted to document the region’s wonders on film. Harris combines extensive research in museums and archives with her own fieldwork in Tibetan communities to present materials that have never been examined before—including the earliest known photograph taken in Tibet, dating to 1863. She looks at the experimental camera-work of Tibetan monks—including the thirteenth Dalai Lama—and the creations of contemporary Tibetan photographers and artists. With every image she explores the complex religious, political, and cultural climate in which it was produced. Stunningly illustrated, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the dramatic history of Tibet since the mid-nineteenth century and its unique entanglements with aesthetics and modernity.

For millions of people around the world, Tibet is a domain of undisturbed tradition, the Dalai Lama a spiritual guide. By contrast, the Tibet Museum opened in Lhasa by the Chinese in 1999 was designed to reclassify Tibetan objects as cultural relics and the Dalai Lama as obsolete. Suggesting that both these views are suspect, Clare E. Harris argues in The Museum on the Roof of the World that for the past one hundred and fifty years, British and Chinese collectors and curators have tried to convert Tibet itself into a museum, an image some Tibetans have begun to contest. This book is a powerful account of the museums created by, for, or on behalf of Tibetans and the nationalist agendas that have played out in them. Harris begins with the British public’s first encounter with Tibetan culture in 1854. She then examines the role of imperial collectors and photographers in representations of the region and visits competing museums of Tibet in India and Lhasa. Drawing on fieldwork in Tibetan communities, she also documents the activities of contemporary Tibetan artists as they try to displace the utopian visions of their country prevalent in the West, as well as the negative assessments of their heritage common in China. Illustrated with many previously unpublished images, this book addresses the pressing question of who has the right to represent Tibet in museums and beyond.

This book provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to Tibet, its culture and history. A clear and comprehensive overview of Tibet, its culture and history. Responds to current interest in Tibet due to continuing publicity about Chinese rule and growing interest in Tibetan Buddhism. Explains recent events within the context of Tibetan history. Situates Tibet in relation to other Asian civilizations through the ages. Draws on the most recent scholarly and archaeological research. Introduces Tibetan culture – particularly social institutions, religious and political traditions, the arts and medical lore. An epilogue considers the fragile position of Tibetan civilization in the modern world.

One of the world's spiritual leaders and a renowned wilderness photographer combine their vision of Tibet in this stunningly beautiful book. Essays by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama appear with Galen Rowell's dramatic images in a moving presentation of the splendors of Tibet's revered but threatened heritage. When Chinese communist troops invaded Tibet in 1950, the author was fifteen years old and the spiritual and temporal ruler of a nation the size of western Europe. Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, appealed to the United Nations for help and then fled across the Himalaya in winter to a border town, where he anxiously awaited political aid that never came. Like the mythical kingdom of Shangri-La, Tibet had sought isolation from the rest of the world. Diplomatic relations and foreign visitors had been shunned, and few people in the West knew what cultural and natural treasures lay threatened there. In the years that followed, the Dalai Lama struggled to maintain peace in Tibet and to protect his people's ways, but in 1959 he was forced to flee to India, where he remains today. There he has established a government in exile in Dharamsala that has endeavored to preserve Tibetan culture while preparing for a peaceful return to a free Tibet. As the Chinese cautiously opened select Tibetan doors to visitors in the 1980s, a sickening realization stole over the rest of the world: Tibet had been ravaged by the Chinese occupation. All but a dozen of Tibet's six thousand monasteries had been destroyed. Much of the once-bountiful wildlife had disappeared. A sixth of the population had perished. The picture seemed so bleak that many wondered whether there was anything worth saving in this wounded land. The Dalai Lama's heartening answer and Galen Rowell's magnificent photographs leave no doubt that the mystery and enchantment of Tibet, though seriously endangered, are still alive. To Tibetans the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of the Buddha of compassion. He has spent the last thirty years tirelessly advocating nonviolence and compassion to all living things as the answer to Tibet's plight. "My religion is simple," he says, "my religion is kindness." My Tibet movingly elaborates this message: here the Dalai Lama offers his views on how world peace, happiness, and environmental responsibility are inextricably linked. He explains the meaning of pilgrimage for Tibetan Buddhists and gives an engaging account of his early life in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. In addition, he reveals many sides to his nature--compassion, profound faith, common sense, generosity, a playful sense of humor--in personal reflections matched here to 108 photographs of the land he hasn't seen since 1959. Together the breathtaking photographs, which express Rowell's own commitment to the natural world, and the Dalai Lama's observations help preserve the enduring meaning of Tibet's culture, religion, and natural heritage.

Ever since the first European travelers reached Tibet six centuries ago, Westerners have been fascinated and tantalized by tales of that legendary, remote mountain civilization. Today, Tibet 's peaceful , integrated way of life; deeply felt Buddhist tradition; and its culture rich in art, architecture, dance and music have all but disappeared, gradually replaced by the trappings of life introduced since the Chinese take-over of the 1950s. Most of the 3,000 monasteries and temples that once dotted the Tibetan countryside have been destroyed or converted into museums. Only in a few scattered emigre communities, in the treasures hastily smuggled out by 100,000 refugees who fled Tibet in 1959, and in a handful of photographs, is the old Tibet remembered and preserved. Tibet: The Sacred Realm brings together for the first time a selection of more than 140 of these rare photographs, taken from 1880 to 1950 by more than twenty intrepid adventurers, naturalists, explorers, scientists, and missionaries, who were among the very few in the West to travel to Tibet. In this valuable visual record the forward-looking thirteenth Dalai Lama sits in exile in India surrounded by his high officials; one of Tibet's wealthiest families poses in their Western-style dining room; the artificial lake of Lhasa reflects the imposing gilded roofs of the Potala Palace; Buddhist monks perform sacred dances in ornate animal masks; pilgrims circumambulate the holy city; and monks and sheepskin-bundled nomads gather on the vast northern plains to listen for the first time to a visitor's gramophone. Selected from the collections of twenty-three institutions' archives and private sources in Europe and the United States, the photographs represent the finest work of the explorer-photographers Alexandra David-Neel, Brooke Dolan, George Taylor, Ilya Tolstoy, and Claude White, among others, including the Tibetan photographer Sinam Wangfel Laden-La. Facing inclement weather, the threats of bandits, the objections of the lamas, the countless other hardships, these photographers still managed to distill the essence of Tibet's mystery and fascination. Recalling his early years in Tibet, Buddhist scholar, translator, and son of the former chief state oracle of Tibet, Lobsang P. Lhalungpa adds another dimension to the story revealed in the photographs. He shares his recollections of a boyhood in Lhasa, his training under the most revered Tibetan lamas, his life as a monk official in the Dalai Lama's government, and his sorrowful departure from his native land: "I mounted my favorite gelding, which had been saddled with its finest saddle cover. As I bent down to tuck the folds of my clothes under one leg, my round, fur-and-brocade-trimmed hat slipped off my head and fell to the ground. I remember feeling instant apprehension. Was this a sign that I would never see Lhasa again?" As the technological age threatens to swallow, one by one, the unique civilizations of the world, the lessons to be learned from the age-old traditions of Tibet become all the more valuable. Tibet's past, illuminated here by glimpses of special vision, offers profound spiritual insight and a majestic feast for the eye. The photographs are introduced by a preface by his Holiness the Dalai Lama. "Whatever the fate of Tibet, the spiritual essence of the Sacred Realm remains in the hearts of the Tibetan people. Our cultural heritage lives, too, in the handful of photographs taken in our country before 1950, all the more precious because they preserve a sense of time and place that now exists only in our memories."--Lobsang P. Lhalungpa from the Chronicle

"Photographer Phil Borges introduces Tibetans as individuals rather than as an anonymous element of a remote ethnic group. His first-hand interviews and portraits illustrate how dramatic development, climate change, and the deep devotion of the people are interacting to transform Tibetan culture--for better or for worse."--Jacket.

The catalog of an exhibition at the China House Gallery in New York City, 1992, this vastly important and spectacularly beautiful (126 b&w photographs) volume records Rock's cultural exploration of the Tibetan border regions between 1922 and 1949. 10x11. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portlan