THE LEICA CAMERA BLOG: An Interview With Nicholas Vreeland

The Nechung Medium and Dog, Dharamsala, India, 1979
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland

Q: The Oskar Barnack Room contains five very large color portraits from the 1970’s that you shot with a 5×7 camera. Can you tell us something about your experience with the large format?

A: I went to India with an old wooden 5×7 view camera and a lot of sheets of black and white film. A friend insisted that I take along some color sheets as well. At each sitting, I’d expose a sheet or two of color and the color turned out to be magnificent. Shooting in large format established a very different rapport between my subjects and myself. I was photographing some of the greatest living Tibetan Buddhist masters. The slow formal quality of the view camera process helped me to photograph them respectfully.– from the LEICA CAMERA BLOG Interview

Nicholas Vreeland and Elizabeth Avedon, Bodh Gaya, India, 1985
Photograph (c) All Rights Reserved

"In terms of my work as a monk-photographer, I feel that I’m photographing the extraordinary world in which I live, whether I’m in New York City, in my teacher’s home in New Jersey, my monastery India or in Tibet." – from the LEICA CAMERA BLOG Interview

Vreeland on the way to his Leica Gallery exhibition, NYC, 2011.
Photograph (c) Elizabeth Paul

Self Portrait, Rato Monastery, India
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland

Q: ...your images transcend those of a typical travel photographer: they have a dimension, a spiritual dimension, and a sense of congruity because they represent the two parts of your life that are tied together?

A: They are two sides of my life that have begun to be brought into harmony with each other. Many years ago, I didn’t feel they were congruent. In fact, initially I didn’t even have a camera in the monastery. And when I was given one, I kept it locked in “Pandora’s box."– from the LEICA CAMERA BLOG Interview

LEICA CAMERA BLOG
Nicholas Vreeland Interview
"Capturing Photographs to Honor and Preserve His World"

More about Vreeland's exhibition Return to the Roof of the World
on La Lettre de la Photographie

NICHOLAS VREELAND: NY Leica Gallery

Nicholas Vreeland Exhibition
Informal Artist Talk, May 21, 3-5 PM
Leica Gallery, NY

plans for the opening wall

Return To The Roof of the World
Photographs by Nicholas Vreeland
Curated by Elizabeth Avedon
April 22 - June 4

Leica Gallery • 670 Broadway • NYC
La Lettre de la Photographie: Nicholas Vreeland
www.nicholasvreeland.com

NYC: Weekend Gallery Walk 5.7.11

Climax, 2010. Photograph (c) Lisa M. Robinson
KLOMPCHING Gallery, 111 Front Street, Brooklyn
Lisa M. Robinson: Oceana to June 10

Mouse, Hungary, 2004. Photograph (c) Monika Merva
CLAMPART Gallery, 531 West 25th
Monika Merva: City of Children to June 11

LEICA Gallery, 670 Broadway (at Bond St)

Photographs by Nicholas Vreeland t0 June 4

Khyongla Rato Rinpoche seeing his photograph in the current exhibition.
A must-see. Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland

TIBET FUND: Benefit Photography Auction

Revelation, toned Gelatin Silver Print
Photograph (c) Sean Perry

Angkor Wat triptych
Photograph (c) Jason Florio

Cairo
Donation courtesy of the Gere Foundation
Photograph (c) Richard Gere

Monk on the Roof
Photograph (c) Sonam Zoksang

Gate, Kyoto, Japan 2008
Photograph (c) Wyatt Gallery

11.03.07 #7 Kazzie Mahina
Archival Pigment Print from 8 x 10 inch Unique Tintype
Photograph (c) Joni Sternbach

Wilted Hosta and Oak Leaves, Archival Inkjet Print
Photograph (c) Russ Martin

Solitude, Archival Inkjet Print
Photograph (c) Marcia Schulman Martin

Sacred Lotus VI, Gelatin Silver Print
Photograph (c) Brian English

Fishing Boats, Mae Hong Son, Thailand
Photograph (c) Wyatt Gallery

The Tibet Fund Benefit Photography and Art Auction

The Tibet Fund celebrates 30 Years of Service to the Tibetan People on April 28 with a Gala Dinner and Art & Photography Auction. This year’s event honors actor Richard Gere for his dedication to protecting Tibet’s cultural identity, as well as philanthropists Shelley and Donald Rubin (Rubin Museum of Art) for their devotion to the preservation, study, and enjoyment of Himalayan art.

Chef Eric Ripert has invited Stephane Becht, April Bloomfield, David Chang, Tom Colicchio, Scott Conant, Dan Kluger, Mark Ladner, Anita Lo, Laurent Manrique and Joseph Realmuto to lend their culinary talents to the cause and make 30 Years of Service an extraordinary and unique occasion. The chefs will each cook for a table of 20 guests in the Pierre’s Grand Ballroom, which is being graciously donated by The Pierre Hotel.

Concierge Bid: The Auction will continue as a live event at the Pierre. If someone wants to bid on-line, although they're not at the live event, they can place a "concierge bid" up to a certain amount and the Tibet Fund staff will keep their bid in play at the live event until their limit is reached. If they remain the highest bidder at the live event, they get the photo or artwork.

To buy tickets: call 212-213-5011 e-mail development@tibetfund.org. The Pierre Hotel, 2 E. 61st St. (at Fifth Ave.)

View Auction Photographs & Artwork
Tibet Fund • Gere Foundation • Rubin Museum

NICHOLAS VREELAND: Leica Gallery, New York

Pyramid, Tibet, 2003
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland
(click images to enlarge)
 

Khyongla Rinpoche on His Mountain, Dagyab, Tibet, 2003
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland

Debate, Sera Monastery, Lhasa, Tibet, 2003
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland

Lama Dance, Tibet, 2003
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland

Nicholas Vreeland in Tibet

Riding Towards Wato, Tibet

 
The Nechung Medium and Dog, Dharamsala, India, 1979
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland

Return To The Roof of the World
Photographs by Nicholas Vreeland

April 22 - June 4, 2011 • Leica Gallery • 670 Broadway • NYC

This exhibition of over 35 black and white images, follows the journey of photographer and Buddhist monk, Nicholas Vreeland, as he accompanied his teacher, Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, in 2003 on his return to his birthplace in Dagyab, Eastern Tibet after 50 years. Rinpoche, author of “My Life and Lives,” with Joseph Campbell, fled Tibet in 1959.Vreeland, born in Geneva, Switzerland, a protégé of Henri Cartier – Bresson, son of American ambassador, Frederick Vreeland, and grandson of fashion icon, Diana Vreeland; studied film at NYU, initially working for Irving Penn, before later working for Richard Avedon. He photographed throughout India carrying a Deardorff 5×7, photographing some of Tibet’s most important Buddhist teachers in exile. A select few of these treasured color portraits will hang in the Leica Gallery’s ‘Oskar Barnack Room’....read more on La Lettre de la Photographie

Leica Gallery

Limited Edition Prints available
16x20: edition of 25
20x24: edition of 20
30x40: edition of 10

NicholasVreeland.com
RatoDratsangFoundation.org
Silver gelatin prints by Laurent Girard/Griffin Editions

TIBETAN ARTISTS TRANSFORMED: Gonkar Gyatso & Losang Gyatso at The Rubin Museum

"Gonyar Gyatso's photographic series My Identity is emblematic of the artist´s major ideological shifts across national, political and stylistic borders that constitute “Tibet.” The series portrays a thangka painter at work, seated before a canvas looking out at the viewer, but each time the context is radically different." The series is in Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond at the The Rubin Museum of Art through October 18.

My Identity No. 1, 2003

The first image of four depicts Gyatso dressed in a traditional Tibetan robe drawing a devotional Buddha figure.

My Identity No. 2, 2003

In the second image Gyatso is dressed as a Communist Chinese painter rendering an image of Mao Tse-Tung.

My Identity No. 3, 2003

In the third image Gyatso is dressed as a contemporary refugee artist painting the Potala Palace, chief residence of the Dalai Lama before he fled to Dharamsala.

My Identity No. 4, 2003

The fourth image shows the contemporary Gyatso sitting in a modern flat in the act of creating abstract art. Photographs (c) Gonkar Gyatso /All Rights Reserved

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Gonkar Gyatso was born in 1961 in Lhasa, Tibet. After he studied fine art in Beijing, in the early ´80s he returned to Lhasa where he came into contact with the Dalai Lama’s speeches. These led him to question the truthfulness of the history he was taught as the son of governmental officers and he became acquainted with Tibetan Buddhism. He later went on a self-imposed refugee in Dharamsala, center of the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government in exile, and finally emigrated to London, where he currently lives and works.

Gyatso's art has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including in China, India, Scotland, The Netherlands, and the United States. Works by Gyatso are held in such institutions as the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford, the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Australia, the Burger Collection in Switzerland, the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing, and the Newark Museum in New Jersey, as well as in numerous private collections.

Having lived throughout Asia and in the West, Gyatso's art proposes insightful statements on the cultural hybridism of globalization as well as the sea changes yet to come. (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary)

Losang Gyatso was born in Tibet "when one could walk around Lhasa without running into a single Chinese" and grew up mainly in Britain, where he attended secondary schools during the era of the Beatles and Vietnam, the moon landing and Vietnam. Returning to a Tibetan refugee community in India, he studied Tibetan painting for two years, before arriving in the United States in 1974. He studied advertising in San Francisco, and then worked as a Creative Director for major ad agencies in New York City in the 80s and early 90s.

Losang Gyatso played a major role as the Lord Chamberlain Phala in Martin Scorsese's film, "Kundun", about the life of the 14th Dalai Lama.

Clearlight Tara by Losang Gyatso
The Rubin Museum of Art

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I knew contemporary artist Losang Gyatso for many years when he was one NYC's top advertising executives, winning awards like the Clio's, Addy's and the One show. He was the first to successfully sign and direct Whitney Houston in major commercials for Coca Cola. He began making artwork around 1990 and over the years has also designed several books on Tibet, created identity logos for Tibetan organizations such as International Campaign for Tibet, Students for a Free Tibet, Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy, Tibet Fund, and opened Tibetan restaurants in San Francisco and New York City, as well as playing a major role in Martin Scorsese's movie Kundun!

In an effort to create a network for Tibetan artists, Losang founded a website and is the current Director of the Mechak Center for Contemporary Tibetan Art, which includes artist inside and outside of Tibet. He has exhibited widely in the US and Europe, and lives outside Washington D.C.

+ + +

Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond marks the first exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art in a New York City museum. The nine Tibetan artists featured in the Rubin Museum exhibition each explore contemporary issues--personal, political, and cultural--by integrating the centuries-old traditional imagery, techniques, and materials found in Tibetan Buddhist art with modern influences and media. Tradition Transformed represents the unique position of this groundbreaking generation of Tibetan artists that includes Gonkar Gyatso, Tenzing Rigdol, Losang Gyatso, and Dedron. Several of the artists were born in Tibet while others come from Nepal or one of the large Tibetan settlements in India. Three continue to work in their Himalayan homelands, though the majority have emigrated to Europe and the United States. All have benefited from the possibilities of technology, travel, and personal artistic freedom, which inform their individual responses to the complex interaction between the traditional and the modern in both art and culture.

June 11, 2010 - October 18, 2010
Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond
The Rubin Museum of Art

A Monks PhotoJournal: May and June

Khyongla Rato Rinpoche and friends, May 2010 (enlarge)
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Geshe Vreeland rushing through Naples, June 2010
Photograph (c) Beatrice Caracciolo /All Rights Reserved

Rome, June 2010
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

New York Leica Gallery Director Jay R. Deutsch and Nicholas Vreeland.
My photo, NYC, June 4, 2010

Rinpoche, author of "My Life and Lives", with a foreword by Joseph Campbell, studying Tibetan texts on his porch, June 2010. Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

HH The Dalai Lama Teaching at Radio City Music Hall, May 20th-22nd, 2010. The Teaching Organizers, front row facing, l to r; Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, Geshe Nicholas Vreeland, Richard Gere and translator Geshe Thupten Jinpa. Photograph (c) Herman Velez/All Rights Reserved

Khyongla Rato Rinpoche making a traditional offering to HHDL
Photograph (c) Herman Velez/All Rights Reserved

View Rato Dratsang Foundation Photographs

A Monk's PhotoJournal: Aug 2009, Dec 2009, March 2010, April 2010
An Open Heart by The Dalai Lama, Edited by Nicholas Vreeland

NICHOLAS VREELAND: A Monks PhotoJournal April 2010

Train to New Jersey
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, New Jersey
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Buddha

Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Train from New Jersey
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

A Monk's PhotoJournal: April 2010

New Jersey: Venerable Nicholas Vreeland, Director of The Tibet Center (the oldest Tibetan Buddhist Center in New York City founded by Khyongla Rato Rinpoche), sent photos from his recent stop-over in New Jersey with Rinpoche while they prepare for His Holiness The Dalai Lama's visit to New York in May. The Tibet Center and Richard Gere's Healing The Divide organization will co-host His Holiness The Dalai Lama's Teachings at Radio City Music Hall in NYC May 20-23, 2010. Purchase Tickets.

A Monk's PhotoJournal: March 2010
A Monk's PhotoJournal: Dec 2009

Nicholas Vreeland Bio
Rato Dratsang Foundation Photographs For Sale
An Open Heart by The Dalai Lama, Edited by Nicholas Vreeland

NICHOLAS VREELAND: A Monk's PhotoJournal March 2010

The town of McLeod Ganj, above Dharamsala
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Circumambulating His Holiness the Dalai Lama's palace...
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

View of the valley from lower Dharamsala
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

Mani Stones along the Road
Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

The Ling Lineage: Khyongla Rato Rinpoche teaching Ling Rinpoche (left), Thamtog Rinpoche, Guru Rinpoche, Zopa Rinpoche, Dakpo Rinpoche, Pagri Rinpoche and others. Rinpoche was bestowing the oral transmission of a text written by the previous Ling Rinpoche's predecessor, which Khyongla Rinpoche had received from the previous Ling Rinpoche (b. 1903 d. 1983) and was teaching at the request of the present Ling Rinpoche (b. 1985). Photograph (c) Nicholas Vreeland /All Rights Reserved

A Monk's PhotoJournal: March 2010

Dharamsala, India: Tibetan Buddhist monk and photographer, Venerable Nicholas Vreeland, Director of The Tibet Center (the oldest Tibetan Buddhist Center in New York City founded by Khyongla Rato Rinpoche), sent photos from his recent stop-over in Dharamsala, the home of HH the Dalai Lama. After years of receiving NV's photo-email updates, I'm now posting his updates intermittently as "A Monk's PhotoJournal".

Vreeland's Fine Art Photography was recently exhibited throughout Europe and the U.S., including the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, with proceeds from their sales going towards the Rato Dratsang Foundation.

The Tibet Center and Richard Gere's Healing The Divide organization will co-host His Holiness The Dalai Lama's Teachings at Radio City Music Hall in NYC May 20-23, 2010. Purchase Tickets.

Nicholas Vreeland Bio

Vreeland PhotoJournal
Rato Dratsang Foundation
A Monk's PhotoJournal: Dec 2009
An Open Heart by The Dalai Lama, Edited by Nicholas Vreeland