Tobi Wilkinson: Gyuto

The Tibetan monks of the Gyuto Monastery in Dharamsala, northwestern India, are well known for their strict discipline and their maintenance and practice of the tantric tradition as transmitted within the Gelugpa order. The monastery itself was founded in 1474 by a disciple of the founder of the Gelugpa order, and is thus representative of a special lineage. Over the centuries, its systems of tantric ritual have spread to thousands of monasteries within Tibet, Mongolia, Ladhak and elsewhere.

In this beautiful clothbound volume, Australian photographer Tobi Wilkinson portrays the life of this monastery. Wilkinson’s color and black-and-white photographs focus on monastic rituals, the movements and the objects of those movements: the draping of a monk’s robe; the preparation of food; prayer, meditation, offerings and chanting; votive objects and their care. Gyuto includes a foreword from the Dalai Lama that underscores the importance of this monastery.