Capturing the Accelerating Change in Tibet

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Like many photographers who visit Tibet, Marieke ten Wolde has thousands of photographs of beautiful mountains, pictu resque villages and nomads in colorful costume. But as she immersed herself in Tibetan life, she began to shift her attention from the icons of an ancient culture to the effects of China's rule.

“I still take those photos because some places are just so beautiful, it's a pity not to do it,” she said. “But it's not the most interesting part, I think.”

Starting eight years ago, she has increasingly focused on the changes happening in this Himalayan plateau and on the interaction between Tibetans and the ethnic Han from China. She has looked beyond the beautiful old monasteries and sought out the modern touches that can reveal the complexities of the political and cultural clashes since the Chinese takeover in 1951.

Marieke ten Wolde Morning prayers.

Beijing considers Tibet to be an integral part of China. Tibet's religious leader and former ruler, the Dalai Lama, has accused China of stifling Tibetan culture. The government has encouraged ethnic Han to move into the disputed territory, transforming it from a largely nomadic and agricultural Buddhist civilization into a more modern - but less Tibetan - society. Development is so rapid that Ms. ten Wolde, who is from the Netherlands, says that the same changes that took hundreds of years to sweep through Europe are happening in a single decade in Tibet.

“Sometimes it's very sad, because the beautiful things disappear, and sometimes they're good things,” she said. “But it's always changing. Each time I return it's li ke I'm going back to a different century.”

She has visited nine times since 1998. Her first two trips were for pleasure, but after she became a professional photographer in 2000, she returned to document the transformations. She has photographed mines, dams and the resettlement of nomads into bungalow villages in the middle of nowhere.

The changes have been so abrupt and fast that she didn't even recognize a border city she had visited a decade earlier. She actually wondered whether she had ever been there.

Marieke ten Wolde Mining residue pumped into a lake.

“Nothing of the city remained the same,” she said. “Nothing, nothing, nothing. So much so that I had to check my diary to see if I was wrong, if I really had been there before. And I really had been there before.”

After her last trip, in April 2011, she says it has been difficult to get back to Tibet because many areas have been closed after demonstrations against the Chinese government and incidents of self-immolation by Tibetans protesting for religious freedom and independence. More than 90 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009, 28 in November alone.

In response, Beijing has flooded the country with checkpoints and paramilitary police, while Communist Party leaders introduced a “monastic management” plan to exert more direct control over religious life. The measures included sending 21,000 officials to create dossier s on monks, who would then be either rewarded for cooperating or expelled from their monasteries if they did not. In some cases, they were urged to renounce the Dalai Lama.

On her last visit, Ms. ten Wolde saw a great deal of tension in the streets of Tibet's rapidly expanding cities and said that people were vocal with their concerns about the dams, the mines and the language, which is being replaced by Mandarin in classrooms, government offices and other institutions.

“It's gotten worse year by year since 2008, when there was a lot more freedom,” she said. “Now we can't even go, so we don't know how bad it is.”

Marieke ten Wolde New homes for farmers who were resettled.

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