Lhasa in 1987: A British Photographer's Journey
Retirement marked the beginning of British photographer John Mawer's sporadic global travels, with his 1987 journey "Across Lhasa" among them. Recently, outside forces have compelled him to take a break from this lifestyle, but his photographic output never ceased. Rather, he devoted his sudden abundance of free time to methodically cataloging the extensive archive of his earlier images. On his personal photography website, Mawer has posted more than 260 albums, amounting to 7,600+ travel photos, praised for their delicate attention to detail and astute cultural observation.
These works bear witness to his intense love of photography and travel. While Mawer journeyed to many parts of the world, his time in Asia was the most memorable. His photographs covered a wide range of subjects, from urban scenery and daily life to natural vistas, and his lens captured countless deeply human moments of special significance. Such images reveal the photographer’s ongoing firsthand engagement and thorough exploration of varied cultures and environments.
These photographs constitute a rare cultural archive, offering invaluable visual insights into the society and spiritual ethos of the era. They vividly captured the daily routines, religious practices, and natural vistas of Tibetan Plateau inhabitants during that time. Mawer took them while documenting local life and culture along the way, on his first trip to Tibet in 1987.
The Contemplation of Beauty. With the widespread availability of equipment, technology, and the internet, photography may have lost some of its former solemnity and deliberation. Instant capture and sharing have gradually diminished patience and veneration toward recording, while the medium itself becomes increasingly uniform and standardized, forfeiting its individual character and narrative.
Even a forgotten photograph, left dusty in a corner, still holds the power to cross time. Its condensed spiritual essence and intensity do not vanish as its physical colors grow dim. As the years pass, the quiet, lingering texture of earlier eras—together with reflection on life's many forms and beauty—only becomes sharper and more affecting.
In the blink of an eye, a tunnel connecting us to a bygone world unfolds swiftly when we unexpectedly meet the gaze of a past image. Emotions inevitably revive in an instant, surging and fermenting.
Those authentic modes of being—so simple, unrefined, unhurried, and yet deeply sincere—have grown increasingly scarce and nearly impossible to recreate, while the faint, gleaming traces of life that linger far within time's current never stop reminding us that, beneath the ever more comfortable and convenient exterior of modern existence, the fundamental texture and subtlety of living are eroded with each passing day. What was once taken for granted as entirely ordinary has become, in hindsight, astonishingly rare and precious.
Time's passage is not something abstract; it resembles an immense, flowing river built from the countless moments that real people have lived. Although pictures utter no words, they touch our innermost awareness with more accuracy and immediacy than speech ever can. Making repeated trips into the past allows us to recover the affection and warmth that existence previously offered, reweaving our connection to the disappearing remnants of cultural heritage and the humanistic spirit.
These old photographs capture a city before its profound transformation, with everyday moments quietly revealing a lively human spirit. Scenes of monks within temple grounds, farmers working the soil, children racing through country paths that have long since disappeared, and vibrant marketplaces alive with street commerce... Such images prompt us to contemplate the connections between photography and memory, and between individuals and their times.
During his travels, Mawer sought chance encounters. He deliberately picked "inconvenient" forms of transport, slowing down to feel and measure the land with his own feet, which naturally aligned him with the tempo of ordinary local life. He had no regard for tourist landmarks or guidebook schedules, instead valuing the unplanned surprises that lay beyond any itinerary. After arriving at a local area, he, like in many journeys, spent most of his time taking short-haul buses between villages or hiking alone across fields and mountains.
By fully immersing himself, rather than watching from a distance like a sightseer, the photographer finds his emotional connection to the land and its people deepening naturally with each step. Through this approach, he sought to reach the "essential" state of existence, uncovering purity in silence and simplicity. Nearly forty years on, fragments of life from those remote highlands remain as vivid and clear as if they were yesterday. This profound empathy and reverence transcend time, becoming something eternal.
Diligence and Frugality: In those lands still largely absent from mainstream media coverage, physical and mental hardships were ever-present. During the 1980s and 1990s, Tibet's infrastructure remained rudimentary, with scarce information access and tourism resources. For a Western photographer, the added obstacles of language barriers and high-altitude weather meant that travel could hardly be regarded as conventional recreation.
Yet fatigue and loneliness were quietly dissolved by an intangible solace that arose from the universal language of human connection—interactions grounded in sincerity, kindness, and beauty.
Chance encounters led to many of the stories captured on camera: a street dentist carefully extracting a patient’s tooth; two sisters chatting as they worked in a sea of ripe golden barley at harvest time; a young boy standing beside a tractor, shyness and childlike wonder showing in his eyes as he faced Mawer’s lens; a little innocent girl with a basket on her back, gathering grass to keep as winter fodder for her family’s yaks; several men walking home together in the twilight after a day of toiling in the fields; and a man with traditional red hair tassels weighing fresh beef for a customer at the market.
When we encounter a photograph from the past, what we observe and feel goes well beyond the frame before us, because memory naturally turns hazy and complex over time, influenced by subjective selection and filtering. With Mawer, his candid, unembellished documentation grants these images an unadorned yet powerful authenticity, and appreciating his work reveals a deep reverence and understanding for foreign cultures.
French thinker and writer Roland Barthes deeply investigated the delicate connection between photography and memory in his foundational book *Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography*—a philosophical reflection centered on the medium’s essence. At the same time, a complex, almost oneiric nostalgia links past and present, where emotions, thoughts, and surroundings from that moment rise again like slowly ascending mist, warmth laced with melancholy. “Boy Wrapped in a Khata” “This-Has-Been.”
According to Barthes, a photograph operates as a wordless story, seizing a moment that defies expression. It acts simultaneously as evidence of what has passed and as a bulwark against oblivion. At its core, photography is defined by its symbolic nature—a voiceless record that holds onto what previously existed, what Barthes famously called the "this-has-been". Yet that "which-has-been" is tinged with sorrow, since the photograph represents the lifeless, fixed past—a remnant of time.
Roland Barthes’ discourse on photography takes on a rather pessimistic tone, one that seems to confirm his description of the medium as a “mournful art.” His idea of “this-has-been” stresses the photograph’s capacity to evoke both loss and certainty. Yet perhaps old photos, as tangible records of time, amount to more than just nostalgia; they draw the viewer into reflection on what no longer exists in the present.
Mawer’s intimate photography, moving beyond the grand linearity of conventional historical narratives, records time through microhistories—tender yet powerful, filled with emotional resonance and humanistic concern. These images effortlessly interweave memories that remain alive with breath and sentiment. An old photograph does more than transport us backward; it also refines our view of the present and quietly plants the seeds of what is to come. Therefore, the capture of days gone by can still ignite fresh cultural expressions and open paths for re-creation.
This article has been translated from DaLu's blog. As the Tibetan Proverb states: "Those who are diligent shall not be erased from memory, nor shall the resolute deviate from their course.