Tibetan Portrait #5

Gelatin silver bromide print on pH neutral paper, made by the artist, 100 cm x 80 cm and 70 cm x 56 cm

Copy 1/15 (100×80)

Copy 1/10 (70×56)

This body of work was made in the town of Lhassa during Gao Bo’s fourth trip to Tibet, and corresponds to the first prints hand-made by the artist. Equipped with an old 4×5 field camera and a Polaroid camera that allowed him to hand out prints to passers-by he photographed, Gao Bo had obtained the status of street photographer from the local authorities; he could thus calmly make his often improvised group portraits without being bothered by plain-clothes police officers.

“…One could say that this “portrait” of Tibet which organizes itself around the tension between the images of the traveler and the portraits is entirely structured by the affirmation of point of view, of subjectivity, of a thought which constitutes the double visions, reducing to nil the appearance of certitude which traverse the photographic representations in order to oblige us to think of a totality–a globally. Thus a microcosm, a well defined territory in its real geography, it returns us to a conception of the world.”

Gao Bo Photo Tibet 1993-1995

Preface by Christian Caujolle, Summer 1995