Wednesday was Losar, Tibetan New Year, and I spent the day with my friends from the Seattle-area Tibetan community. It’s been over four years now that I’ve been hanging out with and photographing the local Tibetans, so one might suspect that I'd go into the day with some what-we-did-in-the-past preconceptions of how my friends would celebrate the New Year. There would be morning prayers at the Tibetan monastery, followed by singing, dancing, and eating, eating, and more eating that would last into the night.
For months now I’ve been looking forward to Losar, if only because it is one Tibetan event when, though I do take photographs, I also kind of force myself to put down my cameras and participate. Losar to me has come to feel like a day when my community-minded friends celebrate the simple joy of being together, and I honor that spirit by talking and laughing more, and perhaps photographing less.
As Losar approached, however, it became clear to me that my friends were in no mood to party, because, with each passing day, the news out of Tibet has become more and more grim. Over 20 monks and nuns have died in the past year by setting themselves on fire in protest of Chinese repression and crackdowns, and, in the end, Tibetans-in-exile throughout the world decided that this New Year would be marked, not by celebration, but by prayers and peaceful protest.
I made the two pictures posted above on Wednesday at the Tibetan monastery in Seattle. One of the images below was shot recently at a candlelight vigil in downtown Seattle, and the other at a rally and protest held outside the Chinese embassy in Vancouver, BC.
If you are interested in more information on current events inside Tibet, here is a link to an NPR story that aired Tuesday:
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/21/147170229/protests-self-immolation-signs-of-a-desperate-tibet
