Katherine Anne Paul, PhD
Curator, Arts of Asia, Newark Museum

John Claude White. Khampa Dzong, Southern Tibet near Sikkim, 1903. Photograph courtesy of the Newark Museum. View a slideshow of photographs of Tibet from the Newark Museum's collection on MetMedia.

The most significant depository of historical photographs of Tibet in the Americas is housed at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey. Numbering more than 2,500 images, most of the photographs were taken between 1905 and 1949 by a number of extraordinary individuals—including Dr. Albert L. Shelton, Reverend Roderick MacLeod, Reverend Marion G. Griebenow, Harrison Forman, C. Suydam Cutting, Heinrich Harrer, John Claude White, and Rhenock Yap Tseten Tashi.

It was through Dr. Albert L. Shelton that the Newark Museum's Tibetan collection was first established in 1911, a legacy that brought many subsequent collections to the museum in later years. Dr. Shelton was an American medical missionary who, with his wife Flora, arrived in China in 1903. There the Sheltons learned Chinese and Tibetan languages, had two daughters, Dorris and Dorothy, and established a mission hospital in Batang, on the border between Tibet and China.

Dr. Shelton was admired as a doctor and peacemaker, and was well respected by local Tibetans, Chinese, and his fellow missionaries. The latter included Reverend Roderick MacLeod, a colleague in Batang, and Reverend Marion G. Griebenow, who was a medical missionary working for the American-sponsored Christian and Missionary Alliance Mission at Labrang, between 1921 and 1949—both of whom also took photographs that are held within the Newark Museum's collection. Harrison Forman was an American journalist, adventurer, and explorer who published and lectured about his journeys to Tibet in 1932 and 1937.

C. Suydam Cutting was a financier, naturalist, explorer, and diplomat who, in the 1920s and 1930s, visited areas of western and central Tibet, first in the company of President Theodore Roosevelt's sons, Theodore, Jr. and Kermit, then with his first wife, Helen. Cutting took not only still shots, but also hours and hours of film footage from his 1935 and 1937 trips to Tibet, footage that remains in the Newark Museum's collection.

Photographs by European and Sikkimese photographers also are included in the Newark Museum collection. John Claude White was a British Civil Servant who was appointed Political Officer of Sikkim (1889–1908), during which time he traveled widely throughout the eastern Himalayas and with the British army into Tibet in 1904. His photographs have been published and circulated widely. Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian geographer, mountaineer, and the author of Seven Years in Tibet. One spectacular image of a Tibetan aristocratic banquet taken by Harrer is in the Newark Museum's collection. Rhenock Yap Tseten Tashi established the first photography studio in Sikkim and was appointed court photographer not only to the Chogyal of Sikkim but also the Druk Gyalpo (King) of Bhutan. The Newark Museum retains two albums—over 150 photographs of aristocratic events—from the Tseten Tashi studio.