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2001.59.2.59.2 (Print)
2001.59.2.59.2 (Print)
Hugh E. Richardson
Hugh Richardson
1950
Gyantse Region > Tsi Nesar
2001.59.2.59.2
56 X 45 mm
Print silver
Donated August 2001
The executors of the estate of Hugh E. Richardson
Hugh E. Richardson
Notes on print - 'Ne sar Rtsis GNAS GSAR' is written on the reverse of print in pencil in Richardson's hand and 'Velox' in an oval and '608' are stamped in black. [KC 29/3/2006]
Other Information - Location: Richardson mentions this site in High Peaks, Pure Earth , London, Serindia Publications, 1998, pp. 326-7, " ... Rtsis Gnas-gsar (1950), a group of three early temples. The first, on the side of a hill, is the Ru-gnon temple, a small single-storeyed white building with a rgya-phibs covered in tiles of a Nepalese pattern. Inside is a fine Rnam-par snang-mdzad (Vairocana) holding a large round gold ornament. ... The temple is claimed to be one of Srong-brtsam sgam-po's foundations to dominate his frontiers.// Standing on level ground nearby is the largest temple, the Yum chen-mo. It is a square, wooden-framed building of two storeys with a small turret supported by a lantern frame and crowned by a slate rgya-phibs. ... The upper storey is supported by many-branched wooden pillars. ...// Opposite it is the temple of Rta-mgrin attributed to Ral-pa-can. ...// In the eleventh century monks of the later diffusion of the faith ( phyi-dar ) established themselves at Gnas-gsar, which later came under the control of Sa-skya; ..."
Other Information - The temples are attributed to King Songtsen Gampo and later expanded in the 8th Century by King Trisong Detsen to house an image of Prajnaparamita, which was consecrated by Padmasambhava. Richardson wrote in A Culture History of Tibet, " These (last) appear to be almost neglected and remains as examples of the very humble scale of some holy places built at that time." p. 89[TS 16/3/2005]
Other Information - Dates: The contact print of this image was developed with a related batch of negatives identifiable by the batch number '609', of which there are twently nine similarly marked 6x4.5 contact prints in the Richardson Collection in the Pitt Rivers Museum. Some of these prints have been dated by Richardson to October 1950, and others relate to places that he visited only in 1948-9 and it seems likely, therefore, that this image was taken within this period [MS 17/12/2005]
Other Information - Dates: The date of 1950 for this image is derived from Richardson’s negative album No.4, the cover of which is marked with ‘Lhobrag 1950’. There are 16 images, of Chidesho, Gongkhar Dzong, Lhasa Post Office, Nesar, Yamdrok Tso and Shabsha, Karmaling Chu, Lhobrag, which share the same batch development number and seem to relate to a trip that Richardson took in this year. His preference for using 6x4.5 images, the smallest exposure size possible using his Zeiss Super Ikonta camera, seems to have returned only towards the end of his time in Tibet, possibly to maximise the number of images that he could take on each roll of film (16 using a film plane mask of this size or 8 at 6x9 cm) and this also suggests that the image wa taken at the end rather than the beginning of his residence in Tibet [MS 17/12/2005]
For Citation use:
The Tibet Album.
"A view of valley from Tsi Nesar"
05 Dec. 2006. The Pitt Rivers Museum.
<http://tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk/photo_2001.59.2.59.2.html>.
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