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.

"A unique study of the ways in which the idea of Tibet has been imagined by Tibetan artists both in exile in India and in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (T.A.R.) of the People's Republic of China ... Based on fieldwork conducted over a six-year period during which the author interviewed and photographed Tibetan artists at work in their communities, Harris's study explores how 'Tibet' came to be imagined anew ... provides a fascinating portrait of Tibetan art produced in two parallel but connected worlds--the world of Tibetan refugee painters living in exile and the world of Tibetan painters who remain in Tibet"--Back cover.

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.

Renowned photographer Don Farber, one of the most important chroniclers of Buddhism today, brings the face and the spirit of contemporary Tibetan Buddhism alive with this remarkable book. Portraits of Tibetan Buddhist Masters―a collection of superb color photographs presented with brief biographies and teachings from each master―is a vibrant work, a testament to the compassion and wisdom that lies at the heart of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Farber felt compelled to record the last of the living Buddhist masters who received their training in Tibet and then fled the country following the invasion by China, as well as other masters who survived many years of imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution. He has worked with a sense of urgency to photograph and interview these extraordinary beings who have been the custodians of this endangered Buddhist tradition. His collection of portraits also includes some of the bright lights of Tibetan Buddhism, the younger masters who will carry the tradition into the future. As a photographic archive of Tibetan Buddhist masters, this book plays an important role in preserving Tibetan culture, in all its richness and complexity, through the words and faces of its esteemed masters.

"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.

When Red Guards arrived in Tibet in 1966, intent on creating a classless society, they unleashed a decade of revolutionary violence, political rallies, and factional warfare marked by the ransacking of temples, the destruction of religious artifacts, the burning of books, and the public humiliation of Tibet's remaining lamas and scholars. Within Tibet, discussion of those events has long been banned, and no visual records of this history were known to have survived. In Forbidden Memory the leading Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser presents three hundred previously unseen photographs taken by her father, then an officer in the People's Liberation Army, that show for the first time the frenzy and violence of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet. Found only after his death, Woeser's annotations and reflections on the photographs, edited and introduced by the Tibet historian Robert Barnett, are based on scores of interviews she conducted privately in Tibet with survivors. Her book explores the motives and thinking of those who participated in the extraordinary rituals of public degradation and destruction that took place, carried out by Tibetans as much as Chinese on the former leaders of their culture. Heartbreaking and revelatory, Forbidden Memory offers a personal, literary discussion of the nature of memory, violence, and responsibility, while giving insight into the condition of a people whose violently truncated history they are still unable to discuss today. Access the glossary.

When the Chinese communists came to power in 1949, they moved to reestablish their "traditional" borders and in 1959 annexed Tibet. Most monasteries were closed, nomads were moved onto communes, the nobility were stripped of privileges, forests were cut, roads were paved, military airfields were constructed, and Tibet's communication with the outside world was cut off. A Portrait of Lost Tibet provides rare documentary photographs of traditional Tibetan life as it had been lived for countless generations before the radical disruption effected by the Chinese takeover. Rosemary Jones Tung's text describes the culture Ilya Tolstoy and Brooke Dolan found during their ten-month trek across Tibet in 1942. Tung has selected 131 photographs from the two thousand taken during their expedition. When the Chinese communists came to power in 1949, they moved to reestablish their "traditional" borders and in 1959 annexed Tibet. Most monasteries were closed, nomads were moved onto communes, the nobility were stripped of privileges, forests were cut, roads were paved, military airfields were constructed, and Tibet's communication with the outside world was cut off. A Portrait of Lost Tibet provides rare documentary photographs of traditional Tibetan life as it had been lived for countless generations before the radical disruption effected by the Chinese takeover. Rosemary Jones Tung's text describes the culture Ilya Tolstoy and Brooke Dolan found during their ten-month trek across Tibet in 1942. Tung has selected 131 photographs from the two thousand taken during their expedition.

In His Holiness, award-winning photographer Raghu Rai has captured the Dalai Lama’s journey in India since exile from Tibet in 1959. Rai presents an intimate photographic portrayal of the life of one of the most popular twentieth-century spiritual leaders. Since the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s forced exile from Tibet in 1959, Raghu Rai, one of the world’s most famous photographers, has documented his life in India. Now leading Tibetan Buddhists from afar, His Holiness is respected around the world as a pillar of peace and moral strength while he remains separated from his country. Enhanced by historical commentary and archival photos of the Dalai Lama and Tibet, Rai’s work follows the spiritual leader’s journey from exile through his present worldwide influence in a stunning and intimate photo series. Born to a peasant family in 1935, Lhamo Thondup was recognized at age two as the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and became the temporal leader of Tibet at age fifteen. In 1959, he was forced into exile in India after the Chinese military occupation of Tibet. Since 1960, he has resided in Dharamsala, aptly known as “Little Lhasa,” the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. Award-wining photographer Raghu Rai has spent over four decades charting the changing face of India. Photographing subjects from Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa to the victims of Bhopal, he is one of the most prominent and well-known visual chroniclers of the country. In His Holiness, Raghu Rai has captured the journey of the Dalai Lama in India, presenting an intimate photographic portrayal of the life of one of the most popular twentieth-century spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lama.