TIBETAN

In 1970, exiled Tibetan monks founded the Buddhist monastery of Sera in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. This monastery promotes the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of one of the "Three Great Monasteries", Sera in Lhasa, the five hundred year old monastery now under Chinese control. This monastery in exile is a place of shared learning and a place for philosophical and religious debate. It is a place where the highest academic graduates of the monastic university will grow up. The monks will study Buddhist teachings and texts here for almost twenty years. Rock captures the asceticism and deep spiritual life within this world. Capturing the sense of community, the precise routine of singing and prayer, as well as moments of play. Rock's austere photographs give us a unique insight into daily monastic life with monks working on handcrafted items or meditating in their sparsely furnished bedrooms. The deliberate absence of color photographs lends further intensity to these images. Rock uses light to frame intimate spaces, shape shapes, accentuate gazes and gestures. He photographs some monks against neutral backgrounds, as in his portraits of famous singers and musicians. The simplicity of these compositions reduce the image to the expressive languages ​​of clothes and faces: faces that are not easily forgotten, the seriousness of children's faces immersed in reflection, the subdued and concentrated faces of the young, and the cheerful serenity of the old. The Artist's photographs reveal the great strength she draws from an experience of displacement and loss of homeland. It shows people who have traveled extensively in search of higher wisdom. The art of this photography is mixing. It also leads us to an encounter with ourselves, seeing a beauty in simplicity that we may no longer recognise.