Fosco Maraini ▎ Photographer Traveling with Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci

23 décembre 2025

"Remember,
races do not exist,
only cultures do."
—Maraini's philosophy and creed in life

Photography by Fosco Maraini

Fosco Maraini

Fosco Maraini was an Italian photographer, writer, mountaineer, and anthropologist. He was born in Florence; his father was an Italian sculptor, and his mother was a model and writer of English and Polish descent, born in Hungary.

Fosco Maraini

As an anthropologist and photographer, he is renowned for his travel records documenting his expeditions to Tibet in 1937 and 1948 with Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci. In addition to documenting the lives of the Tibetan people, Maraini also recorded the Ainu people of Hokkaido. His work holds significant importance for the preservation of both cultures.

Tibet Photography by Fosco Maraini

During the Second World War, he lived in Japan, working as an Italian language teacher in various cities. He was imprisoned for two years in a Nagoya internment camp. Maraini traveled extensively in Japan, Central Asia, North Africa, and Italy. He organized numerous photography exhibitions in Europe and Japan, and many of his photographs served as illustrations for his published books.

Photography by Fosco Maraini

In 2002, he received the Award of Excellence from the Japan Photographic Society in recognition of his photographic documentation of the Ainu people in Hokkaido. The society also acknowledged his over six decades of dedicated efforts to strengthen the friendly ties between Japan and Italy. Maraini also conducted extensive photography in Central Asia's Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges, Southeast Asia, and the southern regions of Italy. He passed away in 2004 at the age of 91.

A member of the 1958 Italian Gasherbrum IV expedition, Maraini is second from the right.

Traveling to Tibet with Giuseppe Tucci

Maraini traveled to Tibet in 1937 and 1948. At that time, the journey from Europe began with a sea voyage to India, and traversing Tibet was only possible on foot or on horseback. While Tibet was not known as a "Forbidden Land," few unofficial travelers were permitted to cross the Indo-Tibetan border.

Photography by Fosco Maraini

However, as an assistant to the Italian Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci, Maraini was a privileged visitor, though he was later denied permission to accompany Professor Tucci to Lhasa. Maraini described Professor Tucci as energetic, endlessly inquisitive, possessing certain shamanic qualities, with "an entire library buried in his brain."

Giuseppe Tucci photographed by Fosco Maraini in 1937

He also believed that Tucci was a complex opportunist. Tucci possessed a dark, shadowy side, with certain feline qualities—not exactly sinister, but ruthless. Anything that hindered Tucci's work had to be swept aside. To achieve his goals, Tucci would flatter those in power, whether they were Tibetan monks, imperial officials, and so on. Yet the legacy he left behind is precisely what he intended.

Maraini's travels in Tibet were, in fact, quite limited; he was only permitted to travel along the main trade route from British-controlled Sikkim to Gyantse. This was the "main road" for European visitors to Tibet. No one had studied the temples and monasteries along this route as thoroughly as Tucci, and no one understood Tibetan customs as intimately as Maraini did.

Photography by Fosco Maraini

The Beauty and Ugliness of Tibet

His book *Secret Tibet* was first published in Italian in 1951, with an English edition following the next year. The most captivating parts of the book are the descriptions of his encounters with Tibetans; Maraini was genuinely concerned with people. He said, "Who can be interested in the abstract when there are people of flesh and blood to be understood?"

Photography by Fosco Maraini

This work does not portray Tibet as an idealized Shangri-La but reveals both the beauty and ugliness of Tibetan life. As one Tibetan Maraini encountered 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!
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?"

Photography by Fosco Maraini

Milarepa is Tibet's "saint," a quintessential religious ascetic whose spiritual journey began with the study of black magic and culminated in attaining enlightenment.

Maraini's book offers a brilliant description of the legend of Milarepa. Additionally, he considered Bön to be a primitive, animistic shamanistic belief, which does not reflect the understanding that Bön practitioners have of their own faith. Unfortunately, Maraini's description of Bön is now severely outdated.