CHALLENGER DEFENDER The Great Tradition of Tibetan Buddhist Debate
For this project, I worked on three different aspects of the work: A Trade Book (MW Editions, 2025), Gold Leaf Prints and Collectors Box Sets, and a Hand Made Accordian Book for exhibition use only.
My project ‘CHALLENGER DEFENDER The Great Tradition of TIbetan Buddhist Monastic Debate’ was started in 2019. when I was a guest at a monastery in Bylakuppe, India. Shortly after arriving at Sera Mey and Sera Jey Monasteries, I was struck by the visualilty of debates, conducted by the Tibetan Buddhist monks who lived there. Debates are an ancient Tibetan Buddhist tradition where monks apply critical thinking skills to derive at their own conclusions about various complex topics which they had memorized from their scriptures. They use their bodies, minds and souls to challenge (or defend) their points of views to their opponents. As a social commentary and social documentary photographer, I felt as though the theatrical appearance of these debates had been lit, staged and choreographed, specifically for me. In fact, there was nothing staged about these debates at all. Floodlights hung from the monastery rooftops to light up the courtyards at night time, to allow the monks to see their opponents and to see the courtyard as they move around in their designated spaces to prove their points. The lights cast shadows from the monks as they use their bodies and make gestures, such as the classic ‘clap and hold’ which often is used to punctuate a specific point.
These Tibetan Buddhist monks are living in diaspora, in India. In 1959, His Holiness the 14th Dalai lama escaped from Tibet into india, in order to preserve the Tibetan Buddhist culture. Tibetans living in Tibet must conform to a multitude of rules and are subject to strict survellience and scrutiny which Beijing has instituted, making unauthorized attemts to cross the Himalayas very dangerous. I felt that Tibetan Buddhist monks were strong but also fragile in their diaspora and I decided to document their unique and beautiful culture, and their debates, to help preserve their ancient tradition. For the first part of my project, I wanted to bring it into bookform in order to achieve this preservation. In 2025, my book, CHALLENGER DEFENDER The Great Tradition of Tibetan Buddhist Debate was published by MW Editions. I’m honored and so proud to say that His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama wrote a beautiful foreward for the book. In addition, I was ecstatic that I both Western and Eastern scholars contributed essays and wrote insights for this book. The book written part of the book was then interpreted into Tibetan so that both western and eastern people would be able to read it.
The second part of the project was very intentional. I decided to make gold leaf prints of my imagery. After having spent time in the Sera Jey Library in India and later, in the Morgan Library in NY, I had seen the original scriptures and had also seen many manuscript covers which were gilded. Though the scriptures themselves were not gilded, I took poetic license to incorporate the gilding I had seen on so many manuscript covers. I wanted to allude to the scriptures as well as the manuscript. The tibetan text was printed on oblong pages, running across the long side of each page. The pages were unbound and wooden panels protected them. The pages were then wrapped in orange cloth that was also used to makeTibetan Buddhist robes. A material flap was placed on top of the material before the wooden panels were placed on the top and bottom of the material wrapped pages. They were then tied together. Through memorization, the scriptures are the essence of what the monks will apply their own critical thinking skills to, and will then formulate their own ideas and learn to defend these ideas and to challenge ideas that are incongruent to them. For this part of my project, I selected twenty different images, printed them on vellum paper and applied gold leaf to each of the images. I made a limited edition of these prints (see my gallery for more information), which included two sets of 7 1.2 square inch prints (1 + 1 AP), as well as four box sets (2 + 2 AP). Each box set included a book covered in red satin book cloth, with a gilded image tipped in to the cover, plus a set of twenty, 3 inch square, gilded images mounted in oblong book mats. Each set of these twenty book mats and images, were then covered with a handmade wooden panel for the front and back. The front panel had the classic ‘clap and hold’ image (same as the image I tipped in to the book cover) on it. I envisioned this as an object which would allude to the beautiful manuscript covers as well as the oblong scripture pages.
Finally, a third part of this project, was to make a hand made, exhibition book. For this part of the project, I used the same methodology as the second part of the project –but here, I only included ten images, which were placed in the same oblong book matts, each with a wooden panel, but this time, the panels were covered with a gorgeous material I had come across which had the feeling of something eastern, exotic and, for me, very Tibetan. For this book, I bound the pages together in an accordian style book, using ribbons which I picked out that would go with this books covering.
