Tibet Now

• Prize
• Photographer
  Ryan Gauvin, Canada
• Date of Photograph
  online
• Website
  http://www.ryangauvin.com

March 2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of China's occupation
of Tibet. Over the course of this occupation, more than a million
Tibetans have been killed, religious sites have been destroyed, and
the traditional Tibetan way of life has been seriously threatened.
The truth of the situation in Tibet is not widely acknowledged
however, due in part to restricted media access, and in part to the
Western tendency to regard Tibet as an eternal Shangri-La, in spite of
a bleak reality. When protests erupted in Lhasa and spread across the
world last March and April, the world paid attention, but the fact
remained that the situation on the ground, in Tibet, remained shrouded
in mystery. And so I undertook a journey in late 2008 to witness for
myself what fifty years of occupation and exile has meant for the
Tibetan people, bringing me from Beijing to Lhasa, and through
Kathmandu and Delhi to Dharamshala. The photographs I returned with
paint a different picture of Tibet than is normally seen, and it is my
hope that they might act as a record of Tibet today, fifty dark years
later.