The Tibetans: Photographs (Hardcover)

In five years of travel, often incognito, through Chinese-occupied Tibet and its exile communities in Nepal and India, photographer Art Perry found all the mystery, magic, wisdom, and compassion for which this Buddhist culture is fabled. Yet the land enshrined in his moving photographs and evocative, thought-provoking prose is no Shangri la. Behind these faces and landscapes, from scholars and monks to unlettered herdspeople, Tibetans live with the grinding destruction of their culture.

In his journeys through this remote region of the world, Perry outwits the Chinese police with a feisty driver; visits a monastery declared off-limits to Westerners; and roves from the electric excitement of Lhasa's marketplace to the searing light of the high frozen desert. He visits monks who meditate by flickering yak-butter candles; and he captures a youn girl's bright eyes, a boy monk's curiosity, nomadic yak herders in their tents, tattered prayer flags, and old men and women blinded by the light.

The Tibetans offers armchair travelers, photography buffs, Buddhists, and spiritual seekers of all stripes the pictorial opportunity to enter the lives of a people whose most treasured commodity is the human spirit and whose plight is the last terrible tragedy of the twentieth century.

About the Author: Art Perry, a lecturer in critical studies at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, has photographed Tibetan communities, both in Tibet and in Ladakh and Nepal, over the last five years. He has had exhibitions of his work on the Maya of Chiapas, the Nubians of southern Egypt, and the Tuaregs of the Sahara. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Tibetans: Photographs by Art Perry

Despite unspeakable atrocities, spirited survival. That's the message that photographer and academic lecturer Art Perry conveys in both gripping words and stunning black and white images collected in his recently published book, The Tibetans: Photographs (Viking Studio, a divsion of Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1999). From the onset - in the introduction by Robert A.F. Thurman, Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University in New York City, and in the author/photographer's essay - the reader is reminded of the impact of 50 years of Chinese oppression and genocide that claimed 1.2 million Tibetan lives and destroyed over 6,000 Buddhist monasteries, once the spiritual backbone of the country. In fact, it was the Tibetans' stalwart survival of torture, rape, persecution, desecration, and environmental degradation that compelled Perry to journey to the 'Roof of the World.' For five years Perry traveled not only in Tibet but also to Tibetan exile communities in India and Nepal. The Vancouver photographer, who is also on the faculty of Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, was determined to shoot pictures that 'speak of a living culture, despite the death and destruction tearing at its soul.' In this, he has admirably succeeded. He has captured the beauty as well as the hardship, the geographic vastness as well as the tiny daily details that make up Tibetan life today. Perry's camera lens rests primarily on nomads and monks. The former he encountered on the harsh Chang Tang Plateau in Ladakh and in the remote Ngari region of western Tibet, home of the 22,000-foot Mt. Kailash, possibly the holiest pilgrimage site in all of Asia. The monks he found by visting about a dozen monasteries, including the once majestic Ganden Monastery that was shelled and dynamited by the Chinese in 1966 and is currently being rebuilt but at an achingly slow pace. Perry's subjects are shown as pensive, fun-loving, prayerful, humble, and hard at work. Their images are sharp and clear as the 'diamond hard light' Perry found on the Chang Tang Plateau, a light, he writes, that inherently carries a 'heightened purity, a profound clarity.' In the end, Perry's portraits of the Tibetan people - their humanity, poverty, warmth, and dignity - testify to their indomitable spirit. Yet, despite their courage and grit, Perry won't let us forget their continuing circumstances, and in fact, leaves readers with a ringing exhortation: 'As you look at the Tibetans in this book, do not forget their story of faith in the face of unimaginable inhumanity.'

By Karen Schwartz Associated Press Writer

The Tibetans:Photographs by Art Perry (Viking Studio/Penguin Putnam, New York, 1999) With the approval of the Dalai Lama, Perry spent five years traveling through Tibet and the Tibetan exile communities in Nepal and India, taking black-and-white photographs of the people in their daily lives. "Before traveling to Tibet I was well aware of the utopian Shangri-La myth and imagined I would see monks in red robes praying under the morning sky; high desert nomads with their luxuriant hair in 108 braids ... . And the truth is, I found all this and more," the author writes. This fascinating book has an introduction by Robert Thurman, a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies at Columbia University.