Nyema Droma is a Tibetan photographer and curator from Lhasa, in the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. She developed her practice as a photographer at the London College of Fashion and has worked in both the United Kingdom and China. As Professor of Visual Anthropology Claire Harris explains: “Her pictures of friends and family project new modes of being Tibetan : whether as consumers of global commodities in Lhasa or as hipsters who are utterly at home in a multicultural city like London. Rather than being the objects of an exoticizing regard in a foreigner’s catalogue of ethnicities, Droma’s subjects are individuals who play with the stereotypes of Tibetanness, adopting or discarding them as shiwftly as a catwalk model changes clothes.”
Exclusively working with local Tibetans, rather than professional models, she creates very authentic portraits of people who are trying to find their way in the globalised and modernised ‘new’ Tibet. “Photography has become the most important thing in my life. Through doing projects and meeting interesting people, and taking pictures with and of them, I’ve learned so much of what goes beyond the camera,” she says.
