In the Shadow of EverestPhotographs by Tom Wool

February 26, 2010–July 26, 2010
Rubin Museum
150 W. 17th St., NYC

Black-and-white image of child leaning over math book and writing numbers in notebook in ink.

In the Shadow of Everest presents photographer Tom Wool’s images of life in the villages of Tibet’s Rongbuk Valley. Taken over the course of four weeks in May 2001, Wool’s photographs capture the Valley’s rugged terrain, which stretches roughly 30 miles from the base of Mount Everest on the north side. Home to some three thousand Tibetans, the Rongbuk Valley area is of distinct importance to the indigenous population for its sacred geography and religious history. Believed to be the place where earth touches the heavens, Mount Everest is called “Chomolungma” in Tibetan, meaning “Mother Goddess of the Earth.” The Valley is also home to the Rongbuk Monastery, the highest of any in the world at seventeen thousand feet above sea level.

Accompanied by two yak men and a tiny horse, Wool followed the route taken during the first British expeditions through this area, including that taken by George Mallory and Andrew Irvine as they attempted their ill-fated Everest climb in 1924. Wool quickly came to realize how little this area had changed since those early expeditions. His photographs epitomize the Valley’s harsh terrain that has been marked by mud brick homes, populated by Buddhist monks and yogis, and inhabited by yaks, sheep, and goats for centuries. Within several years of Wool’s documentation, however, this remote area saw the encroachment of modernity when a road was created to bring the Olympic torch from Mount Everest to Beijing.

In the Shadow of EverestPhotographs by Tom Wool

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