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Joseph Rock took stunning photographs of the Tibet-China borderlands between 1922 and 1935, funded in part by the National Geographic Society. During this span, Rock wrote nine article for National Geographic; some were illustrated with gorgeous hand-colored prints.

Rock arrived in Zhuoni, China in April 1925 and stayed for two years, during which he wrote “Life among the Lamas of Choni” published in November 1928. Zhouni, then a Tibetan ruled chiefdom in Gansu province, was home to a bustling Buddhist monastery with hundreds of monks in residence.

The visual centerpiece of Rock’s article were photos of the Tibetan “Old Dance,” held on the sixth day of the sixth month. Eight agile skeleton dancers were part of the festivities, representing “departed spirits” as described by Rock.

The climax of the Old Dance feature the appearance of Yama, the “grim ruler of the nether world.”

As recounted by Rock, the left-most figure here is Palden Lhamo, the wife of Yama who killed their son, seen dangling from her mouth. According to Rock, due to the British invasion of Tibet decades earlier, it was believed Queen Victoria was a reincarnation of this demon goddess.

Rock developed his own black and white glass negatives and sent them back to the United States. Artists then hand-colored the images according to detailed descriptions furnished by Rock (later, Rock would use potato starch based Autochrome color plates).

Rock was able to purchase a complete set of the Tibetan Buddhist canon printed at Choni Monastery before the printing blocks were destroyed in 1929. To read a digital version of Rock’s account of Choni Monastery in National Geographic, see tinyurl.com/4dwe2tmb.

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