News and Views on Tibet

Tibetan Photo Project keeps gaining momentum

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The Tibetan Photo Project started during the 2000 Mendocino Music Festival when Joe Mickey, a professional photographer, teacher and sports editor for The Mendocino Beacon and the Advocate-News, was introduced to a sponsorship program for monks living in exile in southern India. It has gained national attention thanks to Mickey’s perseverance and patience.

Mickey sent a disposable camera and was provided a glimpse into the everyday lives of the monks. 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.

More cameras went to India. 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.

Mickey had been giving North Coast standing room only presentations of a slide show version of the Tibetan Photo Project and in January he was invited by Colorado College in Colorado Springs to give a series of presentations on the project in early March. In a city of half a million people, the project received significant press in the area’s major papers. The Gazette, the alternative Independent and the entertainment magazine, Springs, all told portions of the Tibetan tragedy suffered under Chinese control.

According to Mickey, one of the main goals of the project is to create new avenues for the Tibetans to tell their story. Mickey feels that this is important not only for the survival of the Tibetan culture, but as China is rising on the world stage as both an economic and military force, it is important for Americans to understand the nature of the Chinese government. “Given that the new leader in China, Hu Jintao, made his political reputation as the Party Secretary of Tibet, the perspective provided by the Tibetans experience with Jintao becomes very relevant,” Mickey says, noting that Jintao implemented martial law and a brutal crackdown on the Tibetans in 1989. Mickey notes that by looking at the Chinese leadership through the experience of the Tibetans he is not surprised by China’s efforts to attempt to under report the SARS outbreak in order to protect their tourist trade. He said the fact that China has refused to use its leverage in helping solve the nuclear problem between the U.S. and Korea is also in keeping with the nature of the Chinese government that controls Tibet. During the war in Iraq, CNN reported that the Chinese have been active in trying to hack U.S. military and government computers.

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 from 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 do a half hour show.

Momentum growing

Mickey returned from Colorado Springs to a shipment of 50 cameras from Kodak that were generated from a letter seeking support for the project. The letter had been sent on behalf of the project by Erlene Gleisner 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 had just finished writing an article on the project for the June issue. Popular Photography is the largest consumer magazine on photography. The project also picked up coverage from another regional magazine, Conscious Living in Australia has requested a press package.

While the project is blossoming on its own, Mickey says it is also out pacing him. “The images from the 1930s and the new images by the monks need to be printed for museum and gallery showings. Those costs are significant. And not to look a gift horse in the mouth, shipping the 50 cameras from Kodak to India and processing 50 rolls of film will take a long time given the costs.”

The needs of the project are outlined at http://www.tibetanphoto/ project.com .

“The slide shows have had a way of filling to the capacity of the rooms we are given,” said Mickey. “A portion of the profits generated from the shows help us get out press packages. Every time it appears in print that out of a population of six million, 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed by the Chinese government and that only 13 of 6,000 monasteries are left standing, the project is filling its purpose to get the story out in areas of the media where it would usually not be talked or written about. The rest of the profits from the slide shows are sent to Tibetan causes, including the monks, the International Campaign for Tibet and a Tibetan school in northern India.”

The next slide show presentation is scheduled for May 5, at the Gualala Art Center at 7:30 p.m. A $5 donation is suggested.

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