New Tibetan Photographers: Beyond Shangri-la (Tricycle)
Tibet has long filled a unique space in the popular imagination of the West. Destination of spiritual seekers, spies, and explorers, home for centuries of the Dalai Lama, it came to be seen as a mysterious, magical realm on the roof of the world. With the invention of photography in the 19th century, Westerners began to capture an imaginary Tibet with their cameras, initiating a visual record of mythmaking about the country. This perpetuation of Shangri-la stereotypes—together with the loss of early photographs by Tibetans due to the 1959 Chinese takeover—has made it a challenge to keep Tibet’s past and present alive. According to Oxford University Professor Clare Harris, however, the situation is changing as a new generation of Tibetan photographers provides fresh ways of seeing both the Tibetan homeland that is now incorporated into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Tibet in exile…