His Holiness, in Pictures

Tomorrow marks the 90th birthday of the exiled principal spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, His Holiness, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Since 1990, Swiss photographer Manuel Bauer has spent hundreds of hours with H.H., documenting his travels and public appearances around the world as well as the ensuing media hype. In Bauer’s forthcoming book, Dalai Lama: Photographs by Manuel Bauer. 1990–2024 (Scheidegger & Spiess, 2025), the photojournalist shows us intimate glimpses of the Dalai Lama rarely seen by those outside of his inner circle, including times spent meditating at home and in hotels, tending to his home garden in Dharamsala, or keeping up with his physical regimen. The volume also contains a special section that documents and explains the building of a Kalachakra, through photos of the fascinating sand mandala ritual that the Dalai Lama held with followers in the Indian Ladakh region in 2014. Rounded out with essays by Thupten Jinpa, the Dalai Lama’s longtime interpreter and a renowned Buddhist scholar, and captions by Swiss journalist Christian Schmidt, Dalai Lama provides unique insights into the life of one of the most distinguished scholars of Buddhism and famous personalities of our time.

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