Join us for a multimedia presentation and drinks reception to mark the launch of Peter van Ham’s book TABO–GODS OF LIGHT: The Indo-Tibetan Masterpiece–Revisited (HIRMER, 2024). With special permission, author and photographer Peter van Ham has been documenting the sanctuaries of Tabo, otherwise strictly off-limits to cameras, for thirty years. In the summer of 2023, he returned with photographic equipment that provides the highest digital resolution in the world. The result is a book of outstanding quality and breathtaking beauty.
The Buddhist Monastery of Tabo, founded in 996 CE and located in the barren Himalayan mountain desert of Spiti, formerly Western Tibet, now part of India, is the oldest temple site in the entire Tibetan cultural realm to have survived largely unaltered in its original state. Simple mud temples built at ground level were designated as a university and served as a meeting place for saints and scholars during the so-called “Second Dissemination of Buddhism in Tibet” in the eleventh century.
From this “golden period”, Tabo’s main temple, the “Palace of Excellent Teachings”, preserves within its interior an exceptionally comprehensive masterpiece of Indo-Tibetan art: An arrangement of thirty-three thousand-year-old sculptures and hundreds of paintings, created by Indian artists in collaboration with West Tibetan workshops in an incomparably fine and beautiful style, forms a unique horizontal mandala that till today is understood as representing a means of attaining the highest enlightenment.
Furthermore, through its various temples, Tabo offers the rare opportunity to experience and study the entire range of Tibetan art forms and styles—unique masterpieces, especially from the second period of West Tibetan art (fifteenth/sixteenth centuries), but also from later periods, have been preserved and are also described in detail in this volume.
Peter van Ham has been researching Himalayan culture as an author and photographer for over thirty-five years, documenting it in sixteen books and numerous articles till date, with a special focus on early Indo-Tibetan art. The Dalai Lama, UNESCO, and the Archaeological Survey of India have supported his work. Based in Frankfurt, Germany, he is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic and the Royal Geographical Societies, London, as well as the Explorers Club in New York City. Chairing the Society for the Preservation and Promotion of Asian Heritage (SPAH e. V.) since twenty years, he is active in curating exhibitions and performing multimedia presentations on the subjects of his research.
Organised by Jordan Quill (Phd Candidate, The Courtauld), and supported by Professor Sussan Babaie as part of the series From the Land of Snows: The Art and Material Culture of Tibet and the Himalayas, part of the Trans-Asias Research Cluster.
