“I used to consider myself an aspiring photographer, however I became a Buddhist monk.”

Photographs by Nicholas Vreeland: Return to the Roof of the World: This exhibition of over 35 black and white images, follows the journey of photographer and Buddhist monk, Nicholas Vreeland, as he accompanied his teacher, Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, in 2003 on his return to his birthplace in Dagyab, Eastern Tibet after 50 years. Rinpoche, author of “My Life and Lives,” with Joseph Campbell (E.P.Dutton), fled Tibet in 1959.

Vreeland, born in Geneva, Switzerland, a protégé of Henri Cartier – Bresson, son of American ambassador, Frederick Vreeland, and grandson of fashion icon, Diana Vreeland; studied film at NYU, initially working for Irving Penn, before later working for Richard Avedon. He photographed throughout India carrying a Deardorff 5×7, photographing some of Tibet’s most important Buddhist teachers in exile. A select few of these treasured color portraits will hang in the Leica Gallery’s ‘Oskar Barnack Room’.

“I began studying Buddhism with a Tibetan lama, Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, in New York in the mid 70’s. After some years – about 32 years ago – I joined his monastery, Rato Dratsang, reestablished in a Tibetan refugee settlement in the south of India. I remained there for 14 years. At first I didn’t have a camera. Eventually I was given one and kept it locked up in a trunk which I thought of as Pandora’s box. The box was sometimes opened, and toward the end of my time in the monastery I was taking a few pictures each day, though usually in my room. I felt I was doing my scales.”

“Twelve years ago, at the request of my teacher, I returned to New York to help run his Center. In 2003 he was invited to visit his birthplace, in Kham, Eastern Tibet. He asked me to accompany him and to photograph the journey. These photographs are the result of that adventure. I have no idea whether they have any merit other than being a document of an extraordinary journey. I witnessed the return of a Tibetan incarnate lama to his birth place, to his nomads, to his monastery. We rode many hours a day to get to these places, and were welcomed by devotees who had for the most part, never seen their lama, as Rinpoche had not been home in fifty years.” Nicholas Vreeland

Nicholas Vreeland, Director of “The Tibet Center, New York”, and editor of “An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life,” by The Dalai Lama (Little Brown), a New York Times best-seller, lives part time at Rato Monastery, in Karnataka, India. “Photos For Rato,” an exhibition of Vreeland’s photographs to raise funds for the reconstruction of Rato Monastery, was held at the Fondation Henri Cartier- Bresson in Paris, and has since toured Europe, India, and the United States.

Return to the Roof of the World
Images Selected by
Elizabeth Avedon

Leica Gallery, New York
Opens 22 April – 4 June, 2011

Rato Foundation Website
Leica Gallery Website
Nicholas Vreeland Website