"Far" by Monika Andersson

Photography By Monika Andersson, Member of the Arts Faculty

January 11, 2010 through February 26, 2010
 

Very few outsiders have ever visited the Himalayan towns and villages in Arunachal Pradesh, the eastern-most state of India that is located in the remote mountain peaks between Bhutan and Chinese-ruled Tibet. Its inhabitants are people of the Monpa tribes, direct descendants of the nomadic Tibetans who roamed this land with their herds before the Chinese overtook their lands.
 

As a result of this isolation, modern civilization has barely made a mark in this area; and traditional Monpa culture flourishes, as the men and women, wearing colorful clothing, including spider-like yak hair hats, raise their families, keep animals, and farm the Himalayan slopes.
 

Traveling around India, photographer Monika Andersson, an instructor in Groton School Arts Department, has captured some spectacular and informative images of the Monpa, photographs that span her trips from a Tibetan refugee colony in New Delhi to the most remote Arunachal Pradesh villages. Now, in “Far,” the Christopher Brodigan Gallery’s winter exhibit, her superb photography is on view.

 

Arunachal Pradesh is contested territory, with both India and China claiming ownership; and the Chinese closing of the border between India and Tibet has cut off the Monpa living there from their nomadic lifestyle and from other Tibetan tribes. As a result, they face many threats, such as a lack of access to health care, education, good nutrition, and clean water; and the loss of land to the encroachments of the Indian military. Still, their beautiful culture survives; and Anderssons’s photographs show the Monpa striving to protect it.

 

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