Amy Luo

In the Secrets of the Land is project between me and my grandfather, who died last year of terminal liver cancer. His painful death plunged me into an emotional impasse. To heal myself, I started to read his poems about Tibet, the mystic land beyond the Himalayas, and a holy place in which he wandered about throughout his twenties as a pilgrim. He said he has left part of his soul there when he had to come back to the South. In May, I made it to Tibet and travelled extensively, penetrating all its prefectures including the very remote Ngari Region bordering India and Nepal. I've explored many places emerged in his poems, Tibet's zones of exclusion, its blind spots and its vast blank spaces. Whenever I saw a place or a person reminiscent of his writing, I tried to capture or reconstruct an image, in the hope of translating his beautiful lines to visual form. Some of these pictures were captured in what I called 'non-places' at the edge of Tibet which were largely devoid of human existence. Alienated and scared, some of the places you cannot even find on a map. There's something mystical, raw and yet unsettling about the people whom I encountered and photographed, in a space where desolation, isolation, a dearth of resources, and romantic myths neatly overlapped. I was also faced with life-threatening conditions due to extreme altitude. I met with death itself. Towards the end of the journey, I was relieved to know that I'm no longer absent in my own pain and grief. I travelled with my grandpa, through his poems, and with my own eyes, in a sacred place that now means a great deal to both of us.