What did the early color photographs of Tibet look like?

14 januari 2026

Tibet, tongue-out greeting

An encounter with herders on the plateau

On the pilgrimage route around the mountain

A treasure dormant for over sixty years

More than sixty years after falling into dormancy, a treasure collected over a lifetime by a European man named Carl Simon was accidentally discovered in an old warehouse. Like something beautiful sealed away for years in silent darkness, the moment it saw the light again, its vibrant colors—which had retreated into mystery along with the time of its concealment—still managed to transcend the constraints of time and space, shaking the heart in an instant. People would be left speechless, marveling at this unparalleled beauty.

This is the composition of the precious treasure: twenty-three thousand exquisitely crafted, meticulously organized color glass slides and photographs stored in two hundred wooden crates, most of which were hand-colored; two original projectors with accessories and fifteen lenses; and a large number of manuscripts once used to narrate slide show presentations.

On the Tibetan Plateau

Gazing at these dazzling and richly colorful images, one discovers that nearly all of them were recorded during travels around the world in the early 20th century. Among them, we can see: Native Americans adorned with magnificent feathered headdresses and vibrant traditional necklaces; ascetics from India, gaunt and sorrowful, wrapped in dhotis, sitting cross-legged; Tibetan monks draped in saffron robes blowing white conch shells during a ceremony; and a young woman by the edge of a Nordic forest, wearing a dark red floral-patterned dress, seemingly lost in thoughts of her beloved, sitting quietly on a stone with her arms naturally hanging down, her head lowered in silence.

Natural scenery

A young Moroccan boy, a potter, is intently and meticulously hand-painting beautiful patterns onto the rough surface of pottery, while a wild reindeer, alert, lifts its head like a spirit with bright black eyes, gazing toward the source of a sound. A snow-capped mountain, like a transcendent soul, reaches toward the sky, shrouded in swirling clouds; a volcano quietly spews rose-colored flames, while a turquoise lake on the plateau, mirror-like, exudes an eerie and mysterious aura in the faint light of dawn...

Switzerland, Bernese Oberland
Snow and ice form a beautiful color contrast with the mirror-like emerald green lake surface

Elegant and hazy emotional resonance

And among them, a series of hand-colored photographs of Tibet are likely among the earliest and most precious color photos we can see today. Regarding these color pictures, which painter hand-colored them and which photographer took them during actual travels and expeditions to Tibet is now impossible to verify. Only a few of the photos still retain what might be fragments of journals, possibly handwritten by Carl Simon himself from his personal travels.

Yet, they were later fortunate enough to be collected by a man who loved traveling and cherished life. They appeared together in a crate, forming a sizable legacy that, in silence, speaks of understanding, respect, and admiration for different civilizations in various corners of the world and for the people living within them.

The Tibet portion of Carl Simon's collection of color slides
This rare and unique visual archive
was acquired by Frank Golomb in 2012
Image: United Archives

Stupa

From towering sacred snow-capped mountains to endless emerald grasslands, and from vibrant Tibetan clothing to colorful artworks, Tibet—a place rich in natural resources and cultural heritage—is filled with a dynamic and passionate tension of colors. The Tibetan people love colors, revere them, and are enveloped, enriched, and nourished by them.

Even though the colors in the photographs we see are not naturally captured through true color photography but rather hand-painted, we can still capture a unique beauty from them. This beauty goes beyond a simple restoration of Tibet's original natural colors and, more importantly, reflects the curiosity, longing, and reverence of people in the early 20th century—when the world was not yet connected by advanced communication technologies—toward the unknown world.

They used color as a beautiful and poetic language to vividly convey this sentiment. Artistic pursuit and romantic craftsmanship served as a rainbow-colored bridge connecting different civilizations, carrying their profound spiritual aspirations.

Friends on the Tibetan Plateau

From the perspective of modern aesthetics, hand-coloring may appear somewhat rustic and primitive. Some colors, due to their exaggerated intensity, even come off as slightly jarring and peculiar, while others bleed beyond the outlines of objects, creating a blurry, washed-out effect. However, if one returns to that era to understand and appreciate it, they will find that hand-coloring was not merely about adding color to black-and-white photographs. It was a heartfelt effort to imbue the images with a unique texture and emotion through layers and gradations of color, thereby creating an idealized beauty within the imagery. This thoughtful creation lends these precious century-old scenes of Tibet a poetic quality that transcends the physical world, evoking an elegant and hazy emotional resonance in people.

Cham dancer

A Magical Journey Through Color Slides

Carl Simon initially worked as an agent for a photography company. In 1907, he founded his own company to serve the emerging photography industry. His company manufactured cameras, rented slide projectors, and one of its most important activities was hosting live slide screenings. During these screenings, a dedicated actor would read specific descriptions for each image, and a small band would perform background music tailored to the show.

Native Americans

Beneath a set of photographs of Native Americans, Carl Simon's commentary reveals a tone of heaviness and regret: "The traditional attire of Native Americans is worn only on solemn occasions. The government has designated reservations for them, but the land allotted is not the best. The Native American population in the United States now numbers only about 250,000. They represent the last romantic vestiges of national life."

As for a photograph taken overlooking the Alps, the commentary brims with joy, romance, and poetry: "The beauty of this scenery is beyond words—the wonders of the Alpine world lie fully before the eyes. On clear days, the view stretches endlessly into the distance. Even when clouds churn and boil like a sea beneath one’s feet, the sight remains sublimely magnificent. Those sacred peaks, domes, and ridges rise like fairy tales from the mist, making one feel closer here than anywhere else to the 'spirit of the world.'"

Faulhorn, most famous for its mountaintop hotel,
is one of the oldest and highest-altitude mountain lodges in the Alps.

Accompanied by the band's music and listening to these documentary and literary commentaries, it is not difficult to imagine such a beautiful scene: a hundred years ago, on a certain day, in a darkened space resembling a cinema, a group of people held their breath, filled with curiosity, and stared intently at the flickering screen, where immersive color images unfolded before their eyes like a series of magnificent dreams rotating and shifting in reality. Their emotions were tightly gripped, making them forget time and space. Perhaps even after the screening ended and they walked out of the hall, they would still feel a sense of loss, lingering on the magical, vibrant, and enchanting journey they had just experienced, as if it were a mesmerizing illusion.

And this was precisely Carl Simon's original intention. He aimed to broaden the public's horizons through such engaging activities, showcasing a vibrant and beautiful world far beyond their daily experiences and imagination.

Looking towards the Keoladeo Mountain

According to statistics, Carl Simon presented nearly three hundred slide shows across the country in his lifetime, each one fully attended, leaving audiences enthralled and in awe. It was also from this time that Carl Simon began collecting various exquisite hand-colored glass slides and images. Over the following thirty years, he amassed a collection of nearly 80,000 images. Though most were lost or scattered, over 23,000 remain well-preserved to this day.

After his death, his son continued the tradition of slide shows. With the rise of film and television, this tradition persisted until the 1960s before finally coming to an end.

Switzerland, a winding mountain road

Observing change with the eyes of an infant

Before Kodak officially launched Kodachrome color film in 1935, photographers could only rely on a series of experimental color presentation methods to realize their imagination and pursuit of beauty. Thus, hand-colored photographs gained immense popularity in the early 20th century.

This ingenious creativity not only showcased richer layers of color but also, in certain cases, added a touch of romantic artistry to originally simple scenes, imbuing the photographs with a dreamlike and imaginative magical effect. Even as imaging technology evolved and advanced, gradually rendering such attempts obsolete and pushing them off the stage of history, the way people solemnly observed and experienced life at that time, along with their precious sense of cherishing, still warrants deep reflection.

Deity

Just as in ancient classic legends, there is such a metaphor to describe human curiosity and reverence for all things, without being disturbed by knowledge, concepts, and other fixed frameworks that bring division and judgment. That is, observing a mural with the pure, untainted eyes of an infant.

As sunlight shifts the shadows of flowers, leaves gently sway in the wind, and all things in nature change with the seasons, watching how time, like the greatest magician, alters the appearance of all existence... So-called romanticism is nothing more than the deepest observation and feeling of life, the most instinctive immersion and love.

Tibetan officials and monks

To feel is to exist

The story of Carl Simon's lifelong treasure being accidentally discovered may remind one of the photographer Vivian Maier—a woman with a brilliantly colorful inner world who, though working as a nanny and remaining largely unknown in her lifetime, silently captured over a hundred thousand photographs with a camera, faithfully documenting the ordinary yet warmly lived existence of many everyday people, all from her immediate surroundings.

There is also Oiva in the documentary "The Shadow of the Iceberg," who drifted on ships all his life, quietly recording like poetry on film the innocent smiles of children from around the world, the trembling wings of butterflies, the crimson sunsets over the Atlantic, and the surging waves. He treated these beautiful images as letters entrusted to the cloud messengers, delivering them to the ends of the earth...

People from different corners of the world

They are not celebrities; they are merely passersby in the world. When they are accidentally discovered, their life histories are but condensed into a few boxes of film. Yet, because each moment retains genuine feeling and record, infused with the beating of their hearts and the warmth of their blood, a person's materially finite life thus transforms into the infinite. Their records become proof that such a person once existed on Earth, quietly leaving behind selfless beauty for the world.

Perhaps the precious quality of human beings lies in their capacity for acute feeling—to feel everything they have ever witnessed in their brief lives. Without any record, the mere decades of life would be nothing but emptiness. Yet, because of precious feeling and record, all that remains can break free from the constraints of time and space, carrying the vitality bestowed by that person, flowing on eternally. And each time it is gazed upon, it leaves people with an ineffable warmth and deep emotion.