Handwerker Exhibit to Showcase Portraits of Tibetans

Photographs of Tibetans — families, children, men and women, and even the Dalai Lama — will be featured in an exhibit at the Handwerker Gallery of Art. Tibetan Portrait: Power of Compassion, a collection of photos by Phil Borges, opens at the gallery March 4 and will run through April 4 as part of the Contemporary Art Series.

An opening reception for the exhibit will be held from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 4. The reception will include a talk on Tibetan politics by two speakers from the Ithaca Tibetan Association–Namgyal Monastery: Ven. Salden Kunga, vice president, and Dhundup Dorjee Zhurkhang, secretary. An open discussion will follow the talks.

All Handwerker events are free and open to the public. Located on the ground floor of the Caroline Werner Gannett Center, the gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; Thursday until 9:00 p.m.; Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.; and Sunday from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

The Seattle-based Borges divides his time between editorial/commercial assignments and documentary projects that focus on different cultures and subcultures. He has photographed a street gang in Seattle, the Huichol Indians in Mexico, Native Americans, and tribes in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. He made several trips to Tibet, Nepal, and India in 1994 to learn firsthand about the plight of the Tibetans and to photograph them. His unique use of mobile studio lighting and selective sepia toning creates the feeling that his subjects could step out and touch the viewer. As Borges made the portraits, the individuals shared their personal stories with him. He retells these stories in concise captions that are silk-screened onto the Plexiglas of each frame.

Tibetan Portrait: Power of Compassion depicts the struggle by these deeply spiritual people to survive and to maintain compassion in the face of a 50-year occupation of their country by the Chinese. Despite the hardship and pain Tibetans have endured, their faces radiate strength, spirit, and joy. His book of the same title, from which these photographs come, won the Banff International Book Award in 1996.

A past chapter president of the American Society of Media Photographers, Borges was named photographer of the year by Pacific Northwest Media in 1992. His photos have been published in PhotoMedia, Common Ground, Graphis, and Hasselblad Forum, among other magazines, and have been exhibited in many galleries and museums, among them the Albuquerque Museum, the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle, the Alexandra Palace in London, and the Photographic Image in Portland, Oregon. The Los Angeles County Art Museum and the Portland Art Museum have his images in their permanent collections.

For more information call 274-3018 or 274-3548, or visit the gallery’s Web site.