The Dalai Lama Up Close

THE SWISS photojournalist Manuel Bauer first met the Dalai Lama when he came to Dharamshala on an assignment to photograph the Tibetan exile community in 1990. This would kick-start a life-long interest in the Dalai Lama and the fate of the Tibetan community. Bauer identifies himself with the tradition of ‘concerned photojournalism’, a phrase said to have been coined by the Hungarian-American photographer Cornell Capa, where the impulse is not merely to record something, but to educate and change the world through one’s photographs.

When Bauer first met the Dalai Lama, international fame was only just beginning to catch up with the spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama had won the Nobel Peace Prize just three months before. A few years after he began taking his pictures, Bauer realised how vital it was that there should be a photographic archive of the Dalai Lama. “All we had then were pictures of the Dalai Lama smiling and waving from the stage. We needed to create a more comprehensive archive, a historical record,” Bauer says.

Bauer wanted to help create a record that didn’t just document the Dalai Lama’s life but one that also drew out his persona. This meant an intensive deep dive, shadowing the Dalai Lama through the world, and into his most private moments, sometimes just as he arose from bed or prepared to sleep. When Bauer pitched the idea, the Dalai Lama was more than welcoming. “He said, ‘No problem. You can even sleep in the same room,” Bauer says with a laugh. “I didn’t take up the offer. But I managed without it.” Bauer became the Dalai Lama’s ‘official photographer’, as he pursued the spiritual leader through the world.

Bauer has now brought together a lifetime’s work shadowing the Dalai Lama in his new book Dalai Lama— Photographs 1990–2024 (Roli; 384 pages; ₹4,995). Through 235 photos (and interspersed with text on the many facets of the Dalai Lama’s personality by his principal translator Thupten Jinpa) Bauer takes us from the intimate and private quarters of the Dalai Lama’s life—like him meditating alone in a hotel room before daybreak, sometimes dressed in just a vest, or eating a bowl of muesli while going over texts during breakfast— to public spaces, where he encounters and addresses massive crowds.

Asked to choose a favourite among his photos, Bauer demurs. But he points to a series of images at the end of the book. These are black-and-white photographs of the Dalai Lama’s face while deep in meditation. These are stark images, eyes and mouth closed, of a face closed to the world and turned inward. “In the past, when I would take pictures like this, I would do things like photograph the Dalai Lama’s face from between objects, or give some kind of layer. But I have come to realise that sometimes these kind of pictures, where you are not trying to do too much are the best,” Bauer says. “Sometimes the best photos are the ones you take simply.”

booksBuddhismDharamshalaManuel Bauerphotographsspiritual leaderSwiss photographerThe Dalai Lama