2007

Tibetan book printers from the Derge Parkhang, Ganze Autonomous Prefecture, China. The Parkhang is a printing temple, a place where Tibetan books are produced. They make paper, carve woodblocks, and print books using techniques that have been used for hundreds of years. The Derge Parkhang is one of the largest repositories of Tibetan literature in the world: they currently house more than 300,000 wood blocks.

These pictures are part of a larger project documenting contemporary traditional Tibetan book production, in collaboration with Patrick Dowdey of Wesleylan University.

He is holding one of the wooden printing blocks that they use to produce Tibetan books.