Camera's For Culture- Focus on Tibet

The Tibetan Photo Project

The Tibetan Photo Project started during the 2000 Mendocino Music Festival when Joe Mickey, a professional photographer for over 30 years, a teacher and the sports editor for the Advocate, was introduced to a sponsorship program for monks living in exile the Drepung monastery in southern India.

Mickey sent a disposable camera to Jam Yang Norbu the young man he now sponsors, and was provided nothing less than a magic view into another world. More importantly, the view was not being provided by an outsider looking in through a lens and preconceived notions. "I was being given the vantage point from the inside." msays Mickey. "This was the first time the monks had used photography in their efforts to preserve their culture which has been systematically destroyed by the Chinese over the last 54 years."

Almost immediately, Internet personality Sazzy Lee Varga offered to build and support a Website and the Tibetan Photo Project was introduced to the potential of a world wide audience. The project has received two letters of support from the Tibetan government in exile and the Office of the Dalai Lama. Parade Magazine calls the project "REWARDING"

A collection of gallery prints is slowly being created and will provide another avenue to introduce and show the Tibetan's and their culture.

We hope you will visit the project and more importantly that you will pass it along to people in your address books who might not be aware or educated on Tibet. It is through expanded awareness and the political action that grows with knowledge that Tibet will save itself.

Media Building Blocks

The first media to pick up on the project included the Mendocino Beacon, the Fort Bragg Advocate-News, the Lake County Record-Bee, the Ukiah Daily Journal and The Willits News. San Francisco Chronicle Art Critic Kenneth Baker gave the project three inches and a small color photo, resulting in 1,000 hits on the Website and the donation from Katrina Smaters of Los Altos of about 40 original black and white negatives from a 1932 mountaineering expedition into Tibet. The trek inspired a book, "Men Against the Clouds," a classic account of pioneering American climbers and early reports of a mountain higher than Everest. On a national level, Art & Antiques was the next publication to pick up on the story and several regional publications also published information, including a cutting edge art and culture magazine, Head, in Santa Barbara, and, Aquarius, out of Atlanta, Ga. Aquarius will run its third major feature when the photos form the 1930s will be featured in a fall center spread. The new age tabloid has a circulation of 50,000. The next major development for the project came when Parade magazine introduced 16 million readers to the project with a 3-inch story that resulted in nearly 40,000 hits to the Website. In February, Patricia Lawrence of Caspar, who produces Travel Radio for an audience of 11 million listeners on National Public Radio, invited Mickey to be interviewed for the half hour show.

Momentum keeps growing

Mickey returned from Colorado Springs to a shipment of 50 cameras from Kodak that were generated from a letter by Erlene Gleisner seeking support for the projectn and sent to the CEO of Kodak, Daniel Carp. "When you consider the level at Kodak where this contribution was generated," says Mickey, "this is an extremely significant donation and we are not yet a nonprofit so there is no write-off here for Kodak." The momentum of the photographic industry taking note of the project has moved up another notch. Mickey received an email from Mason Resnick, the managing editor of Popular Photography, he wrote an article on the project that appears in the June issue. Popular Photography is the largest consumer magazine on photography. The Coast Observer in Gualala gave the project a page for a slide presentation at the art center. Through May, international interest has increased with press packet requests from several magazines including Conscious Living in Australia, Photo Life in Canada and Amateur Photography in England. On the Web a Buddhist Webzine based in Canada and a photography Webzine in Argentina have requested material for publication. Mickey's photo of the Dalai Lama has was chosen for an announcement of the Dalai Lama's visit to Germany. The California Institute of Integral Studies requested a photo to announce a September conference on "Wisdom and Action."

The Tibetan Photo Project

The Tibetan Photo Project

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