By Maurice Malanes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
A SELF-TAUGHT Tibetan photographer and a Filipino filmmaker have brought to Baguio City a piece of Tibet, a country still struggling to be free and whose people, including those in exile, continue to long for the Dalai Lama to return and resume his rightful place as their leader.
In a recent photo exhibit at the Victor Oteyza Community Art Space (Vocas) on Session Road in Baguio City, Tenzing Paljor, a Tibetan living in exile in Mongolia, chronicled his six-day visit to his ancestral home in Lithang in Eastern Tibet in August 2007.
Paljor, who regards himself a pilgrim, says he took the photographs for only a few hours in Lithang because of “overwhelming political constraints” and some of these are part of the exhibit.
The exhibit included Paljor’s photographs of Tibetan people and landscapes in India, particularly in the remote regions of Ladakh, Zanskar, Spiti and Kinnaur.
Paljor’s documentary project in the Indian Himalaya was supported by a grant from the Rowell Fund for Tibet, a donor organization established by the Washington D.C.-based International Campaign for Tibet.
The photographs, says a Vocas brochure, reveal Paljor’s intimate interaction with “people who live and survive in some of the harshest environments on earth where the Tibetan way of life is still preserved.”
Magical play
Paljor’s photographs, which also chronicle what he describes as his “pilgrimage,” reveal a magical play of light and shadow. As a result, Paljor produced striking portraits of various Tibetans in deep contemplative or cheerful mood, communicating their inner strength resilience and unconquered spirits.
Take the portrait of a standing, praying monk with clasped hands. Only less than a fourth of his body from head to foot was lighted by an early morning sunlight penetrating a dark room through a small opening.
Paljor also captured stunning landscapes of Tibetan villages where houses, for example, are built atop rock formations. These landscapes again show how Tibetans live and survive amid difficult and harsh situations.
Dubbed “A Tibetan Pilgrim—Travel through the Vanishing Himalaya,” Paljor’s exhibit was opened in his absence on May 30 as he had left for Metro Manila that day.
But Paljor had been in the Philippines to observe the May 10 elections and participate in the recent Tam-awan International Art Festival in Baguio.
Video documentary
Back to back with the opening of Paljor’s exhibit was the screening at Vocas of a related video documentary by a team of Filipinos directed by Baguio independent filmmaker Ferdinand John Balanag.
Entitled “Walking the Waking Journey,” the film was the first to be done about a story of the resilience and hope of marginalized peoples in isolated communities of the Himalayas.
The film tells about the story of Lama Tenzin, a young Tibetan monk, who in 2003 rescued 11 Tibetan children from poor and harsh living conditions in villages in the Himalayan border region of Upper Dolpo, Nepal.
He built a home for them in India where he raised and educated them, also spiritually guiding and nurturing them on the principles of compassion and love so that one day they would go back to serve their communities.
In 2008, the Lama and the children embarked on a 30-day journey back to the Himalayas to visit their homes and families, whom they did not see for five years.
After traversing muddy and rough dirt mountain roads from Katmandu, the children (ages nine to 14), the Lama, some porters (aided by horses and donkeys) and the filmmakers climbed mountains, crossed rivers and braved the biting cold of the Himalayas.
Despite the separation from their parents that they had to endure just to get education, the 11 children were full of dreams and hopes.
A 9-year-old boy, named Karma, for example, dreams of becoming a doctor and wishes to one day come to serve his community. Other children dream of becoming teachers.
