Monk Photography: The Profane Within the Sacred
Born in Gande, Golog in 1997, Qure Taxi—also known as “Still Sun,” the silent sun—entered Golog Long'en Monastery as a child monk and began searching for the vision deep within his own heart. He is now continuing his studies at Longwu Grand Monastery in Amdo Rebgong. In his spare time outside of study, he uses the narrow path of photography to find a way to converse with the world.
Uncle's Camera Qure Taxi's first encounter with photography began through an uncle who owned a camera, a device the young Qure Taxi deemed the most amazing object imaginable. The images it produced appeared to unlock a doorway to another world. He would later go on to join the Huangnan Prefecture Photographers Association in Qinghai Province as well, his photographs—depicting distant mountains, grasslands, and the skies over monasteries and villages—being circulated across social media for a range of viewers to encounter.
According to him, his uncle might have been the very first photographer in their village. After that, he started exploring the world through the camera of a simple cellphone. That sensation resembled a vague childhood memory suddenly coming back to life, with wonder and delight fused together. Rather than a purely aesthetic pursuit, some see photographs as vivid mosaics of intertwined grief and happiness, displayed before the eyes—a lively composition that touches the soul.
For Qure Taxi, photography goes far beyond what some describe as a purely surface-level aesthetic exercise—devoid of emotional depth, like a lifeless body. His curiosity reaches past the subject’s outer beauty into something deeper: the heart-stirring experiences, the joys and sorrows drawn from the depths of the soul. This powerful longing is what has driven his total obsession with the craft, revealing the extraordinary hidden within the everyday. Yet, this passion soon brought its own share of challenges.
Growing up in monasteries and pastoral areas, he encountered many hardships along his photography journey. Acquiring basic gear and equipment was a significant obstacle, yet financial struggles proved even more challenging. What discouraged him the most was the rejection and misunderstanding from the people around him when he first entered this unfamiliar territory. It felt like being hemmed in by walls from every direction.
Light and shadow remain his most intimate feeling, serving as a mirror for self-reflection. As for what photography has given him, the answer is simple: across the journeys that continue day after day, the faces unlike those of everyday life and the unhurried, unexposed moments—lifting them out of ordinary existence and transforming them into something extraordinary—is itself a form of reward. Yet he always believed that without sufficient foresight and commitment even in a trivial task, our genuine ideals would finally become nothing more than empty words.
He aims to use imagery to construct those wordless languages that lie hidden in people's hearts in the midst of everyday life. A photograph, in his view, is a living memory and perhaps a mirror of retrospection: it lets us see once more the life of our youth and also open up and ease the feelings of our later years. Nevertheless, it is hard to do so—to taste with a visionary heart everything that arises in light and shadow, and to blend the beauty of the environment with human nature.
He says that experiencing the joys and sorrows of life is not merely about earning applause and cheers. Whether crying or laughing, let them pour out unexpectedly before the viewers’ eyes. Devoting one’s own heart to the soul of art, and within the long river of ethnic tradition, setting a patch upon some blank space—this is perhaps the purest white khata we can offer, as well as the fullest expression of an ordinary person’s heart.