What Does a Smile Signify on the Plateau?
A cherished writer of mine once observed that in the Tibetan region, a smile frequently conveys far more than words can.
As I recall the many unforgettable encounters from my travels across the Tibetan region, a series of scenes comes to mind: at dawn, there was a wise old man with a white beard I met on the road to Sangye Temple; under the setting sun on the prairie in Heimahe Town, a bashful young boy helped his father gather cow dung; two sisters showed me the way to Zhebeng Temple; at Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, a young monk carrying a flower pot walked toward me; and at Songzanlin Monastery, a local pilgrim and I communicated using only hand gestures.
In Tibet, a smile is the habitual vehicle for conveying every beautiful feeling and intention: friendliness, curiosity, humility, shyness, admiration, and appreciation alike. These expressions resonate with the same essence found in the vast blue sky, the blazing sun, the open lakes, and the sacred snow lotus. At the moment of meeting, the response was almost invariably an instinctive, untainted smile—a traveler from afar received a wholehearted welcome and kindness. In the face of such sincerity, words felt redundant; no language was needed for those warm and pure moments.
Encounter with the Photographer: One day, by chance, I came across Japanese photographer Tetsuya Ishida’s Himalayan travel photographs online. His series of flowing light and shadow instantly drew me in, and I was moved by its delicate yet highly distinctive beauty and emotion. Among the countless domestic and international photographers who have visited this pure land of snow and captured its radiant, transparent expressions through their lenses, Ishida is my favorite.
My search for additional details about him, driven purely by curiosity, ultimately surfaced only the well-known painter Tetsuya Ishida. As it happened, the name belonged to two artists pursuing separate disciplines. Next to that celebrated painter's reputation, the photographer Tetsuya Ishida remained almost completely in the background. Still, the moment a photograph is finished and stands on its own as an independent work, the photographer's renown or credentials cease to hold any relevance.
Once beauty and emotion are fixed within a photograph's frame, they break free from the photographer and travel independently through the world, waiting for the people they are meant to reach. A stranger who comes across these images is moved to the core—that is the essential thing. I am one such stranger. The footprints of Tetsuya Ishida's "Paradise in Memory" extended across Asia, with a particular pull toward countries and cultures steeped in religious history and faith.
The photographs from his Tibet series—capturing children’s radiant smiles and the vivid, abundant details of daily life in the snow-capped highlands—moved me deeply. They seem to hold a mysterious power: the instant a viewer’s gaze lingers on an image, their consciousness is carried to a distant yet tender place. He traveled through Myanmar, Thailand, Bhutan, and Tibet, taking pictures purely out of passion, indifferent to gain or loss. His journey was sincere and pure, filled with curiosity about the world and a fiery zest for life.
I remember a travel-related passage by Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. Regardless, that location feels somehow known to us, as though we had undergone the very same moments as the people seen in those images—or perhaps we were the actual subjects the photographer encountered and captured while on a spontaneous trip. It could just as easily belong to a dream from long ago, a prior life, or a drowsy afternoon fantasy.
Travel and photography are always inextricably linked. As he put it, "Travel, in fact, is about throwing the heavy burdens of my existence—strained to their breaking point—into unfamiliar times and places, and in doing so, looking for a fresh self-awareness to emerge from the many encounters. The interplay between my internal memories, formed by past events, and the memories that arise from imagining what lies ahead lets me perceive and anticipate a different self that remains hidden in ordinary life. And one concrete manifestation of this exploration is travel.
Much of Tetsuya Ishida's photography focuses on children, capturing their untroubled childhood moments. Photography, in turn, appears as a journey of verification—validating memories and validating the self. One's identity is ultimately completed only through traveling thousands of miles, in body and spirit. Along the way, each encounter becomes a fragmented yet profound marker, helping us acknowledge and retrieve the faint, distant remnants of ourselves left in past lives.
The second section records both the religious and everyday life of the highlands. Seeing these innocent smiles, I ask myself: does his heart still quietly and gently hold a special tenderness for those distant childhood days? Does he feel a deep, subtle longing and respect for the unhurried pace of earlier times and the human warmth steeped in them? Sacred and pure things are these: flowers in bloom, the face of a Buddha statue, a child's smile, and the light of the sun and moon.
It is astonishing how rarely these moving records have been gathered into publications. They have seldom been promoted through grand awards or crowded exhibitions. Yet perhaps this very obscurity allows these quietly beautiful works to keep their freedom, purity, and intimacy. A traveler who happens upon an orchid blooming in an empty valley will never forget its breathtaking grace, even though no crowds gather to admire it. Give the camera to a poet.
When a person’s inner life is empty—devoid of sharp perception and attentiveness, lacking genuine emotion and feeling, holding no love or compassion for the world and its natural marvels, and leaving no space within for poetry and far-off horizons—then even photographs made with refined, costly equipment, featuring perfect composition and vivid colors, may amount to nothing. I remember the Chilean photographer Sergio Larrain once saying, “You can spend years training a photographer, but it’s better to just hand the camera to a poet.”
Despite a flawless-looking surface, the image still carries an emptiness, devoid of spirit. This type of photography possesses structure alone, lacking any emotional depth or a window into the human condition. As a result, it is lifeless, transmitting no energy that one can sense. A photograph's vitality lies in the fact that the tale within its captured moment remains unfinished. That tale did not originate when the photographer pressed the shutter—rather, it marks just one pause in an unbroken sequence. Think of a stretch of river: water moved toward that point, and water continues beyond it.
Every photograph by Tetsuya Ishida carries this kind of force. Its narrative continues to move forward each day, endlessly unfolding and playing out—though now it takes place within the viewer's heart rather than in physical space. In this way, life and time stretch on without limit. As I look at these images, I can still clearly hear children’s bright laughter as they chase one another, the clamor of bustling streets, leisurely conversations in sweet tea houses on afternoons, and the sacred whispers of scripture recitations echoing through temple halls.
Here, the clock's hands have been turned back decades. It is a corner tenderly forgotten by time. Within these vibrant, lifelike frames, time appears to have halted. His photography always evokes the slow, distant past—emotional warmth, brightness, purity, and tranquility. Corners Forgotten by Time. Through the thin surface of a photograph, all these voices pour endlessly, and every scene begins to move before the eyes like screen images, guiding the viewer through one miraculous corridor of time and space after another.
This was an encounter that occurs only once in a lifetime. The breakneck, smog-choked tide of materialism had not yet swept anything away. Nature still stepped with calm, graceful strides through every sunrise and sunset. People gave themselves wholly to the grounded, natural rhythm of daily life—free from distraction and anxiety. Children's childhoods stretched on for long years, their carefree days appearing endless. In that era, life proceeded in devout, ancient faith and tradition, serene and undisturbed.
Neither carefully planned nor technically polished, Tetsuya Ishida's photography has a spontaneous, natural quality, carrying a certain rough warmth and simplicity. It does not aim for exoticism or intentionally present the beauty of a foreign culture. Instead, the beauty in these images emerges as a naturally flowing state—a serendipitous, once-in-a-lifetime encounter, arising by chance rather than from any performance.
The scenes he captures, whether taken before or after the decisive moment, always exist in an orderly, unforced state that reveals their inherent dignity and vitality. Yang Yankang, a photographer I greatly respect, once stated in an interview that the purpose of photography is not to seize an image from afar for some practical end, but rather to immerse oneself in life itself. Ishida Toru's work follows a similar path, drawing naturally from the flow of daily existence. I never sense in his images the detached outlook or perspective of someone standing outside the scene.
Rather than appearing out of place, he seems intrinsically tied to his surroundings, as though the location were his native soil, whether in this existence or a prior one. Photography acts as a mirror, reflecting and corresponding to a perceptive soul within the physical realm. The photographer does not merely stumble upon beauty and feeling through a device; rather, these qualities are already planted deep within them. Upon encountering the right scene, the sensation resembles a reunion with a familiar companion, like revisiting a treasured recollection from a time long past.
Tetsuya Ishida’s photography presents a vision of life that feels effortless and full of delight, with faces that radiate health, vitality, and authenticity. Every element appears in flawless alignment, exactly as it should be. His work evokes Hellinger’s poem *I Allow*, in which the poet writes: *I know I came to experience life in the present moment. In each now, the only thing I must do is fully allow, fully experience, fully enjoy. To see, just to see. To let everything be as it is.* This, then, is the "Shangri-La" that photographer Tetsuya Ishida offers to us.
This article is a translation of a post from Dalu's blog, and its title is Returning to the Spiritual Homeland.
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