An Exhibition of Photographs at the Chapel Gallery in Nether Edge, Sheffield.
Following a great response on the opening night and heavy bookings for the Tour and Talk on Sunday 11th at 2pm we are adding another Tour and Talk for Saturday 17th Feb at 2pm.
18th February update: after Friday's enthusiastic Private View today's talk was equally well received; 40 people came and stayed until nearly closing time..."lovely to hear the stories and inspiration behind the photos.. I felt transported to another place and time"..."wonderful memories evoked by these incomparable photographs"..."beautiful, astonishing and photographed with a deep understanding of such timeless realms"..."stunning painterly images, I've never seen photos like this. Design and detail are exquisite"..."amazing photographs with a wealth of knowledge and insight".
I think they like it.
2024 is getting off to a lively start with a new shipment of mirrors that we bought in India last autumn & an exhibition of my photographs from India & Tibet at the Chapel Gallery in Nether Edge, Sheffield. The mirrors will be introduced to the Silk Road Gallery shop and added to the website in from late February, '24.
The Chapel Gallery is opposite Lotte's cafe at the junction of Union Road and Osborne Road, Sheffield S11 9EF.
Exhibition dates are 8-11th & 15-18th February, 2024; open 12-4.
I've been going to India since 1978 but it's only in the last 20 years that I found subjects I wanted to photograph. There are two main stories to my photographs: the monasteries, images, landscape & people of the Buddhist Himalaya in Ladakh, Tibet & Nepal and the Stepwells of Rajasthan & Gujarat.
Two themes link these seemingly very different subjects: the semi desert nature of the landscape, and time - the architectual forms of both regions date back hundreds of years.
I'll be saying more about this in a talk & tour of the exhibition at 2pm on Sunday 11th Feb. We'll travel back a thousand years in time - all welcome!
This is where it all began:
About 20 years ago I saw a photo somewhat like the one above in a Sunday Supplement. Apparently it was a stepped well that had been built around 1030 but then covered with mud and silt after a local river changed course. It was hidden for hundreds of years until it was excavated and revealed around 1980. It took me many years to find where it was located but my hunt for other stepwells was on! Both these stepwells are called The Queen's Stepwell; the one above is the Rani ki Vav at Patan in Gujarat and the one below is the Raniji ki Baori at Bundi in Rajasthan. The Bundi photo was taken in 2022 when the well was flooded with water after unseasonal rain.
Much further north we journey to Tibet and Ladakh - often called Little Tibet because the culture is Tibetan Buddhism and the many of the monasteries were built around the 12th century, at the same time as those in Western Tibet.
This is the dramatic landscape of Western Tibet where the second flourishing of Tibetan Buddhism began at the monastery of Tholing. In the distance are the mountains on the border with Ladakh, India.
A few days drive to the east is the monastery of Samye where Buddhism first took hold in Tibet. This is a view from the entrance to the main temple, looking out at the courtyard where monks are waiting with their incense and carrier bags of devotional offerings.
You could find the same scene in Ladakh: below is Karsha Monastery in Zanskar, adjacent to southern Ladakh. The monastery is built on a ridge that descends to the Zanskar river and the town of Padum.
Below is the Peace Pagoda or Shanti Stupa and mountains near Leh, Ladakh.
I hope to see you at the Chapel Gallery; you can also buy the photos in all sizes at the Silk Road Gallery and online at www.silkroadgallery.co.uk
Other links: https://silkroadgallery.co.uk/blogs/news/looking-back-at-tibet