PHOTOGRAPHIES
Nine thousand people had gathered in the high valley of Shechen, at an altitude of almost 4,000 meters, to receive the blessing of Dilgo Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche. Equipped with a 400mm lens, I was a long way from the man sitting in the crowd, wondering if it was really him I was aiming at and who I was.The first portrait expresses an uncertainty, a certain distance, a touch of mistrust, a questioning.After the first shutter release, I left the viewfinder of the camera and looked at him. Suddenly, the man realized that it was really him I was photographing, and what’s more, he recognized me. From a distance, he gives me this beautiful, benevolent and amused smile (2010).
In June 1995, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (1910-1991), one of the great masters of Tibetan Buddhism of our time, visited Tibet for the first time since his 30-year exile. As an intriguing coincidence would have it, twenty-five years later in June 2010 the young lama considered as his reincarnation visited the very same places in Eastern Tibet. He was welcomed with the same fervor as his predecessor, and was accompanied by Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, Khyentse Rinpoche’s grandson and abbot of Shechen Monastery, who had been a part of the first visits with Khyentse Rinpoche.