Tibet
Born in Paris in 1868, French explorer Alexandra David-Neel was not your average 19th-century woman. Well-versed in Sanskrit and Buddhist philosophy, she eschewed drawing rooms and polite society for the vagabond life of a traveler and explorer. In 1923, at the age of 55, she undertook a daring journey into the heart of the Himalayas and a land at the top of the world: Tibet. Disguised as a pilgrim, she entered the forbidden city of Lhasa--the first European woman to do so--after 13 years spent wandering remote routes through China and Tibet. Though she took many photographs on her journey, David-Neel feared the pictures would fail to convey the wonders she saw. Now, 70 years after that intrepid Frenchwoman made her way to Tibet, Italian photographers Tiziana and Gianni Baldizzone have retraced David-Neel's route and photographed the splendors along the way. Their journey is documented in the lush and spellbinding book Tibet: Journey to the Forbidden City.
Interspersed among the brilliant images of present-day Tibet are David-Neel's original black-and-white photos, along with excerpts from her journals and the Baldizzones' explanations of the culture and landscape. Tibet: Journey to the Forbidden City is both a celebration of a remarkable woman and an elegiac portrait of a culture teetering on the brink of extinction.
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The photographs in this volume are breathtaking: the strong, dignified faces of the people of Tibet and the brilliant hues of their raiments glow in radiant contrast to the deep grays of the cloud-shrouded sky and the dark shadows of the mysterious mountains. Tibet is a mecca for any photographer, but the Baldizzones had a very specific mission in mind: retracing the steps of Alexandra David-Neel (1868^-1969), an intrepid and highly unusual Frenchwoman who traveled throughout the Far East and Central Asia on a spiritual quest fueled by a passionate interest in ethnography, philosophy, and religion. David-Neel journeyed all across Tibet, from its grassland deserts and green valleys to snowy mountains, taking thousands of photographs and writing with great eloquence about her unprecedented experiences. The Baldizzones follow in her wake, visiting grassland nomads, tribes renowned for their equestrian prowess, stalwart mountain dwellers, and serene monks and nuns, capturing the majesty of the land itself and the myriad ways its people continue to acknowledge its sacredness in every facet of their lives.
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