Tibet (In the Earliest Photographs By Russian Travelers 1900-1901)

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This book presents a unique collection of 50 photographs taken by two Russian travelers, a Buryat, Gombozhab Tsybikov, and a Kalmuck, Ovshe Norzunov. in 1900-1901, at the request of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, St Petersburg. These images are believed to be the earliest photographic re- presentations of Lhasa and other famous religious sites of Tibet, the then Forbidden Land. The images are introduced with the thrilling story of Tsybikov's and Norzunov's travels related by Alexander Andreyev. He also dwells on the history of the first use of field photography by Russian pioneer explorers of Central Asia. The introduction is followed by the narratives of the travelers themselves, which abound in many details of Tibet's traditional society and religious life in the last years of its hermit-like existence.

Alexander Andreyev is a Russian historian; a senior research associate at the Institute for the History of Science and Technology, and concurrently director of the Petr Kozlov Memorial museum in St Petersburg. He is the author of Soviet Russia and Tibet: The debacle of secret diplomacy (2003) and other publications.

I owe many thanks to the British Academy for their research grant, which allowed me to come to London and spend some time at the Picture Library of the Royal Geographical Society researching their valuable holdings in the fall of the year 2005. My further thanks are owed to the Frederick Williamson Memorial Fund at the Museum of Archeology & Anthropology. University of Cambridge (UK), for their support of my project by awarding me another grant. which I used partly for the scanning of Tsybikov's and Norzunov's photographs. I also want to thank the staff of the Picture Library at the Royal Geographical Society for their friendly cooperation and in particular for the manufacture of the scans for the book. Finally, some of my friends in Western Europe and Russia, being Tibetan scholars, were also very helpful. assisting me to obtain copies of some old and rare publications on Tibet as well as photographs used to illustrate my introduction, and in this connection I should like to take the opportunity of thanking Alex McKay, Wim van Spengen, Irina Garri, Elena Kharkova and Bator Batojargalov, director of the Urda-Aga museum.