Patrick Sutherland - Spiti The Forbidden Valley

The exhibition will last from May 7th until June 1st, 2003
Opening hours: daily from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. except Mondays

Since the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet in 1959, his homeland has been subjected to a cultural genocide. These photographs are from the Spiti Valley which is one of the last remnants of traditional Tibetan society still intact. This remote community was forbidden to outsiders for several decades but has recently been opened up to unregulated tourism, development and rapid social change.


Culturally part of Tibet, but lying outside the Tibetan border in far northwest corner of India, Spiti is cut off by snowbound passes for most of the year. It was completely isolated for several decades: after the Sino-Indian border wars of the 60's, the valley became a military zone, part of India's "Inner Line" and was forbidden to all outsiders. This political and geographical isolation has left Spiti remarkably untouched by the modern world, a microcosm of the ancient culture eradicated over the nearby border in occupied Tibet.


However Spiti is changing rapidly. The impoverished state government is promoting tourism to attract hard currency, exposing the communities of Spiti to everything that "development" brings with it. They are constructing a snow free tunnel and there is talk of an airport in the valley. New roads are linking the remotest communities and hotels are appearing in the larger villages. Satellite TV in ubiquitous, bringing a display of opulent consumerism, adverts for mobile phones and for compilation tapes of Bollywood hits. Villagers who live in mud houses, plough their barley fields with yaks and cook on burning dung now come home to watch Hindi films on Murdoch's STAR TV.


This project documents the Spiti Valley as it comes to terms with a rapidly changing future. The valley is a barren, treeless desert, perched on the border of occupied Tibet, one of the highest and bleakest inhabited places on earth. The society (total population c.10,000) consists of small isolated villages rising up to 14,000 ft above sea level. Villagers subsist by growing barley on terraces irrigated by glacial meltwater and by grazing yak, sheep and goats on high pastures. The culture is dominated by Tibetan Buddhism and by its monasteries, which date back a thousand years, but the villages are changing fast as western clothing, modern consumer goods, Hindi state education, tourism and entrepreneurialism collide with a culture of monasticism, oracles, traditional healers and primitive agriculture.


These photographs were taken between 1993 and 1998, during four long journeys in Spiti. The project began as a collaboration with two Buddhist monks, Graham Woodhouse, an old friend of mine from Sheffield, and Tashi Namgyal a monk from Key Monastery in Spiti. Tashi introduced us to a network of his friends, relatives and contacts in Spiti. This took us deep inside the community and provided the foundation for the whole work. The people of Spiti welcomed me into their houses, took me into their lives and assisted me with my research. They invited me to weddings, birthday parties and funerals, into the houses of women who had just given birth and the houses of men who were dying. They nursed me and worried about me on the many occasions when I was ill or suffered altitude sickness. To be given such support and such intimate access to this remarkable community has been a rare privilege.