View fullsize It’s nearly been two years and it hurts like it was yesterday…
View fullsize This is my father’s bed at the monastery. Left exactly as it was the last time he visited. The room felt serene—a space waiting patiently for what comes next. My camera has developed a light leak and needs servicing but I like its pre
View fullsize This summer we travelled to Nezang Monastery in Kham to place my father’s ashes at Minzu Dzong, his retreat house overlooking the Dri Chu (Yangste) River. Prayers were offered by his monks for his swift rebirth, a concept I thought I would fi
View fullsize Evening primroses filled the borders the summer after Dad died. It was an ongoing joke that Dad loved them and Mum thought they were weeds and would pull them up. Was it their gentle yellow glow or that they open like magic at dusk that he loved? I
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View fullsize My new series was born from grief — the kind that settles in spaces once shared. This photograph was taken on the field that my father walked round every day — mist rising to meet the crisp, silvery, morning sun of the first spring witho
View fullsize Here in the West, death is medicalised, hidden and unspoken. It was such an honour to be by his side in life but also in death. After sitting in vigil all night and day, with the Spring sun low and golden on the horizon, I witnessed my father&rsquo
View fullsize Even in death he was generous. The last few weeks of my father’s life was like watching a tea light offering in his shrine room reaching the end of its 8hours. The flame flickering, burning low and then, drawing from the last reserves, shining
View fullsize The 49th Day Today, on the 49th day since he passed, it is with great sadness I share the news that my father, Ato Rinpoche, died on Guru Rinpoche Day, 18th May 2024, at home, as he had wished. We are so touched by the many prayers and messages of
View fullsize My father has had trouble sleeping of late, so many dreams he says. The invasion of Ukraine is churning up the past for him. So much suffering he says, the poor children. Why do we humans make the same mistakes over and over? I ask. This is Sam
View fullsize Being read to is one of my favourite things. I remember my grandfather as stern and detached but when he read to us, books came alive. My mum and her brothers have inherited this art of story telling. My dad doesn’t read English very well but
View fullsize Musing my return to work and revisiting the long, hot lockdown summer after finally getting some film developed. Having number three has annihilated me in an all encompassing, gloriously debilitating and intensely immersive way. Lockdown tricked me
View fullsize My Dad gave us quite a scare last week but thankfully all is well. At 86 he has been self isolating since last year but despite this he’s never stopped. In Tibet, the elderly meet at holy places and do kora (circumambulate) they say their pray
View fullsize These images are totally unlike the work I am known for, but to me, they are the most important photographs I’ve taken. The love captured in this image, my father’s hands holding my son in a quiet moment, is also him holding me and me hol
View fullsize Mum pruning the roses. We were living with my elderly parents when the UK went into lockdown. Unable to travel to Tibet as we had hoped to, I instead documented simple moments during those long, hot days living at my childhood home and found myself
View fullsize The first morning job in a Tibetan kitchen is to get the stove going so tea can be made. In our area it’s black or milk tea with salt but no butter. Without the tea there’s no breakfast as you need it to make the staple Tsampa; roasted b
View fullsize One thing I’ve always loved about Kham is that the pace of life is much slower. There’s time to chat, to hang out with friends and family and to really savour each day, each moment. Lockdown here in the UK has kind of enforced that life
View fullsize Karma scans the mountain opposite, searching for his father’s yak out at pasture. The year before it would have been him out there herding them, now his older brother has taken up the mantle again. Becoming a monk is a foreign concept here in