In the spring of 2023 I wrote a piece for The Edition, a Tibetan-community publication, in response to a wave of online misrepresentations of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I have photographed His Holiness in public gatherings, East and West, for over three decades. I felt I owed the moment a record from someone who has been there.

The full essay appeared at The Edition — the link above — and is preserved here as part of the writings record of the archive.

In 1993 I visited my country for the first time since my birth. There, I was devastated to see the condition of the Tibetan people and the destruction of its natural environment.

I was born in Kyirong, a small village in southwestern Tibet, in 1960. My parents fled to India one month after my birth, carrying me with them. I was raised in a Tibetan refugee school in Kollegal, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. I came to the United States in 1985.

When I returned to Tibet in 1993, I had heard about my country my whole life — from my parents, from the teachers in the refugee schools, from the older monks and the lamas. I did not know what I would find. What I found was a country in the middle of something — of being changed, of holding on. I have gone back every year I could. The eleven photographs in this exhibition are from those first return visits.

— Sonam Zoksang, prepared for the Free Spirit Festival, McLeod Ganj, 2001