Fosco Maraini: Photographing Tibet With Giuseppe Tucci

Fosco Maraini, an Italian photographer, writer, mountaineer, and anthropologist, lived by the creed "Remember, races do not exist, only cultures do." Born in Florence to an Italian sculptor father and a mother—a model and writer of English and Polish descent—who was born in Hungary, he gained renown as an anthropologist and photographer for his travel records of expeditions to Tibet in 1937 and 1948, undertaken with Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci.

Maraini undertook extensive travels across Japan, Central Asia, North Africa, and Italy. During the Second World War, he resided in Japan, where he taught Italian in several cities. He was interned for two years at a camp in Nagoya. Besides documenting Tibetan life, he also recorded the Ainu people of Hokkaido, and his work is of great importance to the preservation of both cultures.

In 2002, the Japan Photographic Society presented him with the Award of Excellence for his photographic documentation of the Ainu people in Hokkaido. The society also recognized his more than sixty years of dedicated work in fostering friendly ties between Italy and Japan. Throughout his career, he mounted numerous photography exhibitions across Europe and Japan, and his published books frequently used many of his photographs as illustrations.

Maraini died in 2004 at the age of 91. His extensive photographic work covered Central Asia's Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges, Southeast Asia, and the southern parts of Italy. Together with Giuseppe Tucci, he traveled to Tibet in 1937 and 1948. During that era, reaching Tibet from Europe meant first taking a sea voyage to India; within Tibet, travel was possible only by foot or horseback. Even though Tibet wasn't referred to as a "Forbidden Land," only a small number of unofficial travelers were allowed to cross the Indo-Tibetan border.

Although Maraini was later denied permission to join Professor Tucci on his trip to Lhasa, his position as assistant to the Italian Tibetologist afforded him privileged access. Maraini portrayed Tucci as vigorous, endlessly curious, and marked by shamanic traits, with “an entire library buried in his brain.” He further regarded Tucci as a complicated opportunist, one who had a dark, shadowy aspect, feline in quality—not truly sinister, but ruthless.

Maraini's travels across Tibet were actually very restricted; he was allowed to go only along the chief commercial route running from British-controlled Sikkim to Gyantse, the route known as the "main road" for Europeans visiting the region. As for Tucci, anything obstructing his work had to be removed, and he would ingratiate himself with authorities—Tibetan monks, imperial officials, and others—to reach his aims. In the end, the legacy he left behind was exactly what he had set out to create.

The Beauty and Ugliness of Tibet: along that route, no one had examined the temples and monasteries in greater depth than Tucci, and no one possessed a closer understanding of Tibetan customs than Maraini. Maraini’s *Secret Tibet*, issued first in Italian in 1951 and in English the following year, holds its most engaging passages in the accounts of his meetings with Tibetans, reflecting his genuine care for people.

Photography by Fosco Maraini. He said, 'Who can be interested in the abstract when there are people of flesh and blood to be understood?' Rather than portraying Tibet as an idealized Shangri-La, this work exposes both the beauty and the ugliness of Tibetan life. One Tibetan Maraini met told him, 'We are so different from what people imagine us to be, you know... Often when I read books about us written by foreigners, I feel they don't understand us at all. A nation of saints and ascetics, indifferent to the world—yes, indeed!

Milarepa, Tibet’s “saint,” is a quintessential religious ascetic whose spiritual path began with black magic and reached its culmination in enlightenment. Maraini’s book brilliantly describes this legend. As the passage puts it: “If you want to understand us, you must read the story of Milarepa. It is filled with greed, spells, passion, revenge, crime, love, jealousy, torment. Besides, if we were always kind and virtuous, would there be so much need to preach Buddhist teachings to us?” The photograph is by Fosco Maraini.

Maraini's description of Bön—now severely outdated—characterized it as a primitive, animistic shamanistic belief, a view that does not reflect how Bön practitioners understand their own faith. He posed the question, "So, what is the secret of Tibet?" and sought "the common essence of all humanity." Photography by Fosco Maraini. Photography by Fosco Maraini. Fosco Maraini