COVER spring 1998 / planet of the arts 5 hina: a country of one bil- lion heartless, Communist oppres- sors. Tibet: a nation of six million tortured, suffering compassionate souls. The comparison is obvious; it is the truth. No one would deny the horror that the Tibetans have endured or the brutality that the Chinese have inflicted. If you tried to, you would be shouted down, labelled Insane or perhaps, ironically even pepper-sprayed. In the West, indeed, it is not a very difficult thing to take up the cause of a Free Tibet. And lately it is becoming more and more of a popular thing to do, z Artists and entertainers are at the forefront of the campaign to raise popular sup- port and funds for Vibet. In the U.S.A., and in Canada movies such as Kundu, concerts like the Free Tibet series headlined by the Beastie Boys, and a plethora of photographic coftee-table books are some of the most recognizable and successful projects that have raised awareness of the cause. For a great proportion of our pop- ulation, perceptions of Tibet — especially of its culture and its threatened situation — are Informed for the most part by the messages we receive through our entertainment and cultural networks. And as we all know, our North \merican entertainment industrial complex is. often more concerned with profits than itis with te (ruth. So Tibet has suffered trom varying degrees of romanticization, distortion and down right exploita tion, ail justified inthe name of helping the cause. \ccording to the Disney dictionary, Tibet is a paradise of happy peaceful nomads, simple in their wavs vet enlightened in their spiritual awareness. According to this definition, the teachings of Buddhism are the Inspirauion for a people so in tune with nature and the principles of compassion that they dwarf even the innocence and purity of Snow White herself. Add to this the heroic, sympathetic stardom of the Dalai Lama (Tibet spiritual political leader in exile) and an easy to demonize colonial regime (actually, the Chinese do a pretty good job of demonizing themselves), and what we have in Tibet is a story surpassing the classic David and Hollywood table of Good vs. Evil, or Goliath. This is a story ripe for the sympathies of North Yama is looking emotionlessly at the camera with a silent, closed mouth and pursed lips that convey innocence and charm. She is present- ed to us only from the waist up, her body creating the impression of the triangular form of a mountain peak. She looks down on us as she stands in front of a distant, out-of-focus background of mountaintops that reach the level of her upper arms; her head and shoulders floating in a cloud- speckled sky. Although it is an outdoor portrait, Yama is actually lit artificially by Borges to create a modelling shadow on the far right side of her face. Her photograph is taken with a medium format 6 x 6 mm cam- era ona 120 roll film negative and printed, uncropped, with a black edge line surrounding it, onto 20” x 24” fibre paper. Yama’s image is then toned to a golden, light brown colour in the areas of her face, neck and hands. As a technique the toning is quite successful in creating the visual punch that Borges’ seeks in his portraits. This style of approach is very likely a result of the ten years he has spent in commercial photography. Borges knows what makes an image capture the viewer’s attention. His highly contrived and manipulated portraits emphasize the face and pre- sent mostly either the young and pure child or the old and venerable hero. By using the photographic strategies of toning, unfocussed backgrounds, and longer focal length lenses, which flatten the overall image depth, Borges’ Tibetans seem almost three-dimensional in their ability to draw the viewer up into their space. This acts as a powerful indicator that the subject is on a pedestal, or a mountaintop — somehow closer to heaven. The message that Borges presents in his Portraits is simple: the individual, enlightened, and pacifist. In this way, Yama, 8 is a romantic reflection of Borges’ Tibetan ideal more than it is the truth of the character of a young Tibetan girl. American mass audiences. The Tibetan cause is an easy seli when presented as a disappearing Shangri-La. But still, despite the rhetoric and the romanticization, there are those who come back from Tibetan pilgrimages as believers: true believers, in the wonder, and the beauty, and the transcendence of these far away, powerless, suffering people. The belief of these eyewitnesses is so strong and so common that one has to wonder how much of the Tibetan paradise is fan- tasy and how much is actually the truth? Perhaps the best way to answer this question is by asking another: Why do we go searching for Shangri-La in the first place? A look at the work of two photographers who went to Vibet and found what they were looking for might help us to answer these questions. Tibetan Portraits: The Power of Compassion (Rizzoli, 1994) by Phil Borges, is perhaps the best known Tibetan coffee table book, while The Tibetans: Photographs by Art Perry, is a soon to be published edition on the same subject. These are two books that are quite different from cach other: Borges gives us a “Disneyesque™ presentation of the people of Tibet, while Perry uses a “snapshot” aesthetic to photo- graph the personal narrative of his written text. What ultimately separates the two authors, is the messages that they deliver in their books and the motivations they each have for raising awareness of this far away land. Borges’ success i attracting attention to the Tibetan struggle comes from the interest that he has been able to Art Perry, Nomad Boy with Goatherd, Ngari, near Gar-Gunsa, Tibet, 1997. gather through his photographic style. In his imagery Borges uses an aesthetic that serves both to isolate the individual and to describé him or her in heroic and transcendent symbolism. The black and white, selectively toned image on the cover of Tibetan Portraits isa prime example. What we are offered is the image of a young girl labelled as Yara, 8. She has short, dark, unkempt hair that protrudes out ina manner suggesting a slight breeze in the air. She is wearing an old, well-worn, dark- coloured pullover shirt that has a collar and two white lines on each arm. She also sports a necklace of some fabric-like material around her neck. This adornment reaches down toa small round object that she holds close to her chest with the thumb and index finger of her left hand. Meanwhile her right hand supports her left one, creating a sort of pyramid shape that infers the reverence of the object she holds. At this point it would be good to examine an image produced by Art Perry in order to identify the differences between the two photographers in terms of how each approaches the issues inherent in photographie rep- resentations other cultures. Perry’s image of the Nomad in Homemade Goggles, Chang Tang, Gertse, Tibet, 1997, serves as a good counterpoint to Borges’ Tibetan portraiture. In this image we see an older man wearing a white shirt, bead necklaces, and a black robe thrown over one shoulder. He is probably in his sixties — judging from his skin complexion and greyish continued on next page... SYMBOLS OF TRUTH FOR A FREE TIBET By Alexander Duff NOTE: Perry prints all of his photographs from the full frame of his negatives. With the exception of the cover image, none of Perry's photographs reproduced in this issue have been cropped or otherwise manipulated COVER spring 1998 / plonet of the orts 5 hina: a country of one bil- lion heartless, Communist oppres- sors. 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