Thomas C. Laird | |
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| Born | June 30, 1953 U.S. |
| Status | Active |
| Occupation(s) | Photographer, writer |
| Website | thomaslaird |
Thomas C. Laird (born June 30, 1953) is an American journalist, writer, and photographer who specializes in Tibet. [1] [2]
Laird divides his time between New Orleans and Kathmandu, Nepal, where he lived for 30 years. [3] He has photographed and written for publications such as Time and Newsweek . [4]
At the age of 18, Laird left the United States and travelled, overland, alone, from Europe to Nepal, passing through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. He made that trip six times within the next two years.
In 1973, after studying with Tibetan refugees in Nepal, he received grants from I.A.A. Anstalt to produce ethnographic sound recordings in Buddhist monasteries in Kathmandu, Nepal. The resulting record was one of the first LPs of Tibetan ritual music ever made, released by Lyrichord. [5]
After travelling through revolution-ridden Iran, he settled full-time in Kathmandu, where he worked as a photographer, Himalayan guide, and journalist. [6] He photographed the 1990 People's Movement for Stern, Asiaweek, and others, and a year later received the first ever one-year residence permit for Mustang. Peter Matthiessen and Laird collaborated to publish East of Lo Monthang: In The Land of Mustang in 1995. Laird was also the first Westerner to legally walk through the Himalayas of Western Nepal to Mount Kailash; and the first westerner to descend any part of Tibet's Tsangpo river in a coracle in modern times.
For Time and Newsweek, Laird wrote the first accurate report of Nepal's 2001 Royal Massacre, and reported from the battlefields of Nepal's Maoist revolution in 2003. [7]
Laird's first non-fiction book, Into Tibet: The CIA’s First Atomic Spy and His Secret Expedition to Lhasa, [8] was the result of ten years of research regarding the life, work and death of Douglas Mackiernan, the first CIA intelligence officer ever killed in the line of duty. He unearthed thousands of pages of documents from the National Archives in Washington DC, and conducted one hundred hours of interviews with more than two dozen primary sources ranging from CIA members to the Dalai Lama. [9]
His second non-fiction book, a history of Tibet entitled The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama draws on over 60 hours of intimate conversations with the 14th Dalai Lama, whom he first met in 1993. [10] Spanning 2,000 years of Himalayan civilization, the book is a popular history of Tibet—seen through the eyes of the Dalai Lama. About this book Pico Iyer writes: “Thomas Laird’s book, The Story of Tibet, in which the author gets the Dalai Lama to travel through the whole of Tibetan history from his perspective, already seems to me one of the essential and irreplaceable books in the field, and allows one to hear and feel the Dalai Lama’s particular voice with unique immediacy." [11]
Laird has also worked on film projects Baraka (1990) and The Gurkhas (1998) in various roles, and was also Oliver Stone’s guide in Tibet in 1996. [12]
Since 2008, he has worked to create the world's first life-size images of enormous Tibetan wall murals. [13] Fine art prints of these works have been the focus of several exhibitions and are held in both public and private collections. Taschen published Murals of Tibet in 2018. [14]
Dalai Lama is a title given by Altan Khan, the first Shunyi King of Ming China, in A.D. 1578 at Yanghua Monastery to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of its four major schools. The 14th and incumbent Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso, who lives in exile as a refugee in India. Dalai Lamas are tulkus who are believed to be incarnations of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion.
Lhasa, officially the Chengguan District of Lhasa City, is the inner urban district of Lhasa City, Tibet Autonomous Region, Southwestern China.
While the Tibetan plateau has been inhabited since pre-historic times, most of Tibet's history went unrecorded until the creation of Tibetan script in the 7th century. Tibetan texts refer to the kingdom of Zhangzhung as the precursor of later Tibetan kingdoms and the originators of the Bon religion. While mythical accounts of early rulers of the Yarlung dynasty exist, historical accounts begin with the introduction of Tibetan script from the unified Tibetan Empire in the 7th century. Following the dissolution of the empire and a period of fragmentation in the 9th-10th centuries, a Buddhist revival in the 10th–12th centuries saw the development of three of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Tibetan independence movement is the political movement advocating for the reversal of the 1950 annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China, and the separation and independence of Greater Tibet from China.
The Jokhang, or the Ra sa 'phrul snang gtsug lag khang, or Qoikang Monastery, or Zuglagkang, is considered the "heart of Lhasa". The Jokhang consists of a Tibetan Buddhist temple, its temple complex, and a Gelug school monastery. Located in Barkhor Square, it was built in c.640 by King Songsten Gampo to house the Jowo Mikyo Dorje, a statue of Akshobhya Buddha, brought to Tibet by his Nepalese queen, Bhrikuti. Another statue, the Jowo Shakyamuni, brought by his Tang Chinese queen Wencheng, is currently housed in the temple and the Jowo Mikyo Dorje is housed in the Ramoche, in Lhasa.
The 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso was the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, enthroned during a turbulent modern era. He presided during the Collapse of the Qing Dynasty, and is referred to as "the Great Thirteenth", responsible for redeclaring Tibet's national independence, and for his national reform and modernization initiatives.
Lobsang Trinley Lhündrub Chökyi Gyaltsen was the tenth Panchen Lama, officially the 10th Panchen Erdeni, of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. According to Tibetan Buddhism, Panchen Lamas are living emanations of the buddha Amitabha. He was often referred to simply as Choekyi Gyaltsen.
The 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso was recognized as the 5th Dalai Lama, and he became the first Dalai Lama to hold both Tibet's political and spiritual leadership roles. He is often referred to simply as the Great Fifth, being the key religious and temporal leader of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet. He is credited with unifying all of Tibet under the Ganden Phodrang, after Gushri Khan's successful military interventions. As an independent head of state, he established priest and patron relations with both Mongolia and the Qing dynasty simultaneously, and had positive relations with other neighboring countries. He began the custom of meeting early European explorers. The 5th Dalai Lama built the Potala Palace, and also wrote 24 volumes' worth of scholarly and religious works on a wide range of subjects.
Mikel Dunham is an American author, artist, photojournalist. and Himalayan historian. In the 1980s, Dunham worked in New York City where he created three-dimensional constructions of wood, glass, mirror, photographs and acrylic media. The Alexander F. Milliken Gallery, Inc. represented his work. mounting numerous solo exhibitions in Soho, as well as group installations in the US and abroad.
Douglas Seymour Mackiernan was the first officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to be killed in the line of duty.
The history of Tibet from 1950 to the present includes the Chinese annexation of Tibet, during which Tibetan representatives signed the controversial Seventeen Point Agreement following the Battle of Chamdo and establishing an autonomous administration led by the 14th Dalai Lama under Chinese sovereignty. Subsequent socialist reforms and other unpopular policies of the Chinese Communist Party led to armed uprisings, eventually assisted by the CIA, and their violent suppression. During the 1959 Tibetan uprising, the 14th Dalai Lama escaped to northern India for fear of being captured by Chinese forces. He formed the Central Tibetan Administration and rescinded the Seventeen Point Agreement. In 1965, the majority of Tibet's land mass, including all of U-Tsang and parts of Kham and Amdo, was established as the Tibet Autonomous Region. Tibetans suffered along with the rest of China during the Great Chinese Famine and the Cultural Revolution under episodes of starvation, religious repression, destruction of cultural sites, forced labour, and political persecution. US-China rapprochement in the 1970s saw an end to Washington's support for Tibetan guerillas. Amid broader reforms across the country, China adopted policies to improve conditions in Tibet. Since the 2000s, it has invested heavily in the region but generated controversies due to the sinicization of Tibet. Human rights abuses remain a concern especially where it comes to freedom of religion and political prisoners.
The 1959 Tibetan uprising began on 10 March 1959, when a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which had been under the effective control of the People's Republic of China (PRC) since the Seventeen Point Agreement was reached in 1951. The initial uprising occurred amid general Chinese-Tibetan tensions and a context of confusion, because Tibetan protesters feared that the Chinese government might arrest the 14th Dalai Lama. The protests were also fueled by anti-Chinese sentiment and separatism. At first, the uprising mostly consisted of peaceful protests, but clashes quickly erupted and the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) eventually used force to quell the protests. Some of the protesters had captured arms. The last stages of the uprising included heavy fighting, with high civilian and military losses. The 14th Dalai Lama escaped from Lhasa, while the city was fully retaken by Chinese security forces on 23 March 1959. Thousands of Tibetans were killed during the 1959 uprising, but the exact number of deaths is disputed.
The CIA Tibetan program was an anti-Chinese government covert operation spanning almost twenty years. It consisted of "political action, propaganda, paramilitary and intelligence operations" facilitated by arrangements made with brothers of the 14th Dalai Lama, who himself was allegedly not initially aware of them. The stated goal of the program was "to keep the political concept of an autonomous Tibet alive within Tibet and among several foreign nations". The program was administrated by the CIA, and unofficially operated in coordination with domestic agencies such as the Department of State and the Department of Defense.
Lhasa is noted for its historic buildings and structures related to Tibetan Buddhism. Several major architectural works have been included as UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.
Protests and uprisings in Tibet against the government of the People's Republic of China have occurred since 1950, and include the 1959 uprising, the 2008 uprising, and the subsequent self-immolation protests.
The Battle of Chamdo occurred from 6 to 24 October 1950. It was a military campaign by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to take the Chamdo Region from a de facto independent Tibetan state. The campaign resulted in the capture of Chamdo and the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China.
Gyalo Thondup, born c.1927, is the second-eldest brother of the 14th Dalai Lama. He often acted as the Dalai Lama's unofficial envoy.
The Ganden Phodrang or Ganden Podrang was the Tibetan system of government established by the 5th Dalai Lama in 1642, when the Oirat lord Güshi Khan who founded the Khoshut Khanate conferred all spiritual and political power in Tibet to him in a ceremony in Shigatse. During the ceremony, the Dalai Lama "made a proclamation declaring that Lhasa would be the capital of Tibet and the government of would be known as Gaden Phodrang" which eventually became the seat of the Gelug school's leadership authority. The Dalai Lama chose the name of his monastic residence at Drepung Monastery for the new Tibetan government's name: Ganden (དགའ་ལྡན), the Tibetan name for Tushita heaven, which, according to Buddhist cosmology, is where the future Buddha Maitreya resides; and Phodrang (ཕོ་བྲང), a palace, hall, or dwelling. Lhasa's Red Fort again became the capital building of Tibet, and the Ganden Phodrang operated there and adjacent to the Potala Palace until 1959.
Tibet under Qing rule refers to the Qing dynasty's rule over Tibet from 1720 to 1912. The Qing rulers incorporated Tibet into the empire along with other Inner Asia territories, although the actual extent of the Qing dynasty's control over Tibet during this period has been the subject of political debate. The Qing called Tibet a fanbu, fanbang or fanshu, which has usually been translated as "vassal", "vassal state", or "borderlands", along with areas like Xinjiang and Mongolia. Like the preceding Yuan dynasty, the Manchus of the Qing dynasty exerted military and administrative control over Tibet, while granting it a degree of political autonomy.
The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama is a non-fiction book authored by Thomas Laird, an American journalist based out of Kathmandu, Nepal.
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