To accompany the release of his book Lumière, published by Éditions Allary, Matthieu Ricard is offering a series of blogs on photography. An invitation to share wonder, celebrate the beauty of the world, and continue the quest for light that has guided him throughout his sixty-year journey.
On the way to Mount Kailash. At an altitude of 4,800 meters, the clouds and the earth meet in Bayang, western Tibet. 1998
« Light is the foremost painter. » Léonard de Vinci
« Photography is the art of painting with light. » Alphonse de Lamartine
Is the photographer a painter whose medium is light, whose brush is the gaze? Isn’t photography an endless act of painting, of redrawing faces, the earth, rivers, and glaciers a thousand times over, receiving what nature and human beings give us?
In 1839, British astronomer John Herschel, who was also one of the pioneers of photography, introduced the term “photography,” derived from two Greek roots: “photo-” (φωτoς, photos: light, brightness), meaning “that which proceeds from light” or “that which uses light,” and “graphy” (γραφειν, graphein: to paint, draw, write), evoking that which writes or results in an image. Thus, the term “photography” literally translates as “writing or painting with light.”
“What makes photography a strange invention is that its raw materials are light and time,” wrote English art critic and poet John Berger. Light and time, associated with places and people, are thus the fundamental elements of photography. Their respective importance varies depending on the subject: in the case of mineral light, the time scale spans millions of years and only the place and the light matter. Photographing the sky depends a little on the place and a lot on the time and light, while a portrait, which evokes the light of the heart, requires harmony between all these elements. In all cases, you have to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right light.
For me, it all started around the age of twelve, after receiving a modest Foca Sport camera as a birthday present. I used to photograph puddles and reflections of light in glasses, and my friends and family would say, “Don’t count on Matthieu for family photos.” ” I don’t feel at home in cities and have always found deep satisfaction in living in nature. I started taking photography more seriously around the age of fifteen, accompanied by my friend André Fatras, one of the pioneers of wildlife photography in France. Our meeting took place in unusual circumstances: he washed up in a rubber dinghy full of water, on the verge of sinking, on the beach at La Turballe in Brittany. He had traveled down the Loire with his nineteen-year-old wife and one-year-old baby, with the aim of meeting my uncle, the solo sailor Jacques-Yves Le Toumelin. By chance, he washed up in front of my mother, who was walking on the beach. My uncle welcomed them warmly and they camped for a while on the moorland of his property, Gwenved, nestled in the heart of the Traict du Croisic, between the Pen-Bron peninsula and the ten thousand hectares of Guérande salt marshes.
After that, I often stayed with André in Sologne, where he photographed wildlife, especially birds. I kept learning photography in the field, and before leaving France in 1972, I had published a few nature photos in various magazines, including covers for Réalités and Connaissance de la campagne. My best images from that period were lost after the agency to which I had entrusted them closed down while I was living in India.
After settling in the Himalayas, I mainly photographed my spiritual teachers and their world. My goal was to share the splendor, strength, and depth I witnessed. I have always used photography as a source of hope, with the intention of restoring confidence in human nature and reviving wonder at the wild side of the world.
You can find this entire photographic project in Lumière, published by Éditions Allary.
Matthieu Ricard donates all of his income—royalties from his books, photographs, and lectures—to development projects run by the Karuna-Shechen association, which works to reduce poverty and empower the most vulnerable women, men, and children. In this way, every reader becomes a direct contributor to solidarity through their purchase.
