His Holiness

In His Holiness, award-winning photographer Raghu Rai has captured the Dalai Lama’s journey in India since exile from Tibet in 1959. Rai presents an intimate photographic portrayal of the life of one of the most popular twentieth-century spiritual leaders.

Since the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s forced exile from Tibet in 1959, Raghu Rai, one of the world’s most famous photographers, has documented his life in India. Now leading Tibetan Buddhists from afar, His Holiness is respected around the world as a pillar of peace and moral strength while he remains separated from his country. Enhanced by historical commentary and archival photos of the Dalai Lama and Tibet, Rai’s work follows the spiritual leader’s journey from exile through his present worldwide influence in a stunning and intimate photo series.

Born to a peasant family in 1935, Lhamo Thondup was recognized at age two as the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and became the temporal leader of Tibet at age fifteen. In 1959, he was forced into exile in India after the Chinese military occupation of Tibet. Since 1960, he has resided in Dharamsala, aptly known as “Little Lhasa,” the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Award-wining photographer Raghu Rai has spent over four decades charting the changing face of India. Photographing subjects from Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa to the victims of Bhopal, he is one of the most prominent and well-known visual chroniclers of the country. In His Holiness, Raghu Rai has captured the journey of the Dalai Lama in India, presenting an intimate photographic portrayal of the life of one of the most popular twentieth-century spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lama. 

Raghu Rai was born in the small village of Jhang, now part of Pakistan. He took up photography in 1965, and the following year joined the Statesman newspaper as its chief photographer. In 1971, he was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian awards ever given to a photographer. Impressed by an exhibit of his work in Paris in 1971, Henri Cartier-Bresson nominated Rai to join Magnum Photos in 1977. Since then, Rai has spent over four decades charting the changing face of India. He went on to judge the World Press Photo awards from 1990 to 1997. Photographing subjects from Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa to the victims of Bhopal, he is one of the foremost visual chroniclers in the world.