The photographs of Tibet that few Tibetans have seen

During my visit to Tibet, I told Tashi and Kinga – my guide and driver – that I had a book of very old Tibetan photographs at home.

“Pre-1949?”, they replied in unison, their eyes alive with possibility.

Photographs of Tibet before the Chinese annexation of 1949 are hard to come by in modern Tibet – effectively cutting off Tibetans from visual records of their own sacred heritage.

The book is called Tibet: The Sacred Realm, Photographs 1880-1950.

It’s freely available to the rest of the world but – according to Tashi and Kinga – unknown in Tibet.

The book contains a treasure trove of images taken by the first Westerners who gained access to the secretive Himalayan Kingdom – illuminating a Buddhist way of life that had remained unchanged since the Middle Ages.

Before I left Tibet I noted down Tashi’s and Kinga’s addresses and promised to send them a copy of the book.

A few weeks later I received a message over WeChat (the Chinese version of WhatsApp) to tell me that they had received the book and “were astonished”.

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