Tibetan Masters Project

Photographing and Videotaping the last Tibetan Buddhist masters who received their training in Tibet before the Chinese invasion

impossible.  Don Farber has long been inspired by portraits by Edward Curtis and other photographers that captured the dignity and the continuity of culture of the native Americans.

     As China continues its campaign to bring Han Chinese settlers into Tibet, especially with the new train line from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibetans are facing an escalating erosion of their traditional Buddhist culture - a culture that is profoundly important for it had preserved the original Buddhist teachings and ways of life due to it’s isolation on the Tibetan high plateau.  The elder masters are the custodians of these traditions and it is certain that newer generations of masters and the ways of life in their spiritual communities will not be the same as before. There are few of these masters still living, so it is a race against time to accomplish this mission to document them with the concern for quality that the subject deserves. The documentation includes making portraits, photographing and videotaping them in their daily lives, including in the context of their monasteries and in ceremonies, and making video interviews with the masters.  The work would be carried out in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, and in the West.

  Don Farber’s first photography of a Tibetan Buddhist master was made in 1977 when he photographed the 16th Karmapa.  In 1986 after photographing the great yogi, Kalu Rinpoche, he decided to make portraits of the Tibetan masters a major theme within his larger study of world Buddhist life.  His 1988 portrait of Kalu Rinpoche and his 1989 portraits of H.H. the Dalai Lama became classics.  Portraits of seventy six Tibetan masters, along with text, were published in his book Portraits of Tibetan Buddhist Masters (University of California Press, 2006). 

     Through the years, Mr. Farber would make audio taped interviews with the masters when he made their portraits, but realizing that these moments with these masters were so precious, he decided to do the interviews with a video camera. 

     Building on the work already accomplished, Mr. Farber is seeking support to continue this work at this critical time when the last living Buddhist masters who received their training in Tibet before the Chinese takeover of the country are still alive.  

  Tibetans face a similar fate as the Native Americans who, at the end of the 19th century, maintained their traditional ways of life until the overwhelming force of European settlers made this

DON FARBER PHOTOGRAPHY

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