Land of light and contrasts, wild winds and high plains nimbed in beauty and silence, so near the heaven that mankind and its misery can almost be forgotten. The Tibet of revolutions nipped in the bud, of infinite wisdom fashioned to the rhythm of ages. The Tibet of our dreams knocks up against the hard reality of a colonization garbed in the mirages of globalization. These different facets of the ‘rooftop’ of the world have been restituted in the twinned gazes of these two artists through images that are sometimes sumptuous, often moving, and always true. Claude Levenson’s passionate yet well-reasoned text – a taut thread running through memories of myriad encounters – illuminates our understanding. Tibet, reflection of the world, mirror of our freedom pared down to the essential.
One writer and two photographers unite their gazes and their voices to bear witness. Together they present an up-to-date document, moving yet uncompromising, that manages to capture the diversity of a country torn between tradition and modernity and between two different civilizations (Chinese and Tibetan) with antagonistic points of view.