Founded in 996 CE, the Tabo Buddhist monastery in the barren Himalayan mountain desert of Spiti, formerly western Tibet and now part of India, is the oldest temple complex in the entire Tibetan cultural area that has survived largely unchanged in its original state. Simple mud temples built at ground level were the meeting place for saints and scholars during the so-called “Second Dissemination of Buddhism in Tibet” in the eleventh century. The main temple of Tabo, the “Palace of Excellent Teachings”, dates from this “golden period”. In its interior it houses an extraordinary masterpiece of Indo-Tibetan art: an arrangement of thirty-three sculptures and hundreds of paintings created by Indian artists in collaboration with Western Tibetan workshops in an unrivalled fine style forms a unique horizontal mandala, which is still understood today as a means of attaining highest enlightenment. In addition, Tabo’s seven temples offer the rare opportunity to experience and study the full range of Tibetan art forms and styles – unique masterpieces, especially from the second period of Western Tibetan art (15th/16th century), but also from later periods, have been preserved. 

For more than 30 years, Frankfurt-based researcher, author, photographer and exhibition curator Peter van Ham has been exploring Tabo, normally off-limits to cameras, by special permission. He recently returned to document the temples in the world’s highest digital resolution. The resulting photographic treasures have just been published by the renowned Hirmer Verlag under the title “TABO. Gods of Light: The Indo-Tibetan Masterpiece –REVISITED” as a textually and visually revised, expanded and updated new edition of his book published in 2014. In his 75-minute lecture, Peter van Ham introduces the audience to the unique art that the temples of Tabo still preserve today.