Photography and Tibet

From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, Tibet has been both a source of fascination and a challenging prospect for photographers. Clare Harris will give an illustrated talk based on her book ‘Photography and Tibet’ (2016), the first publication to outline how foreigners and Tibetans have attempted to document Tibet with the camera. Her talk will explore the complexities of visual representation, with particular emphasis on the period before 1959 when his Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama left Tibet. It will also consider how photographs curated in museums and archives can be powerful objects for research and within debates about Tibet’s past, present and future. Clare Harris has researched and published extensively on art, photography, museums, and material culture with reference to Tibet, the Himalayas, and the Tibetan diaspora.