These are portraits that I shot in 2004 at a Children's Day celebration in western Yushu Prefecture. It was incredibly sunny and a lot of my shots from that day were washed out- but there was no hiding the beauty of the nomad families that camped on the grassland around the boarding school. It was late June - I think- and the afternoons were fiercely hot and the nights brutally cold. I had brought a soccer ball to the kids at the school and we played a lot during their days off- until it popped. Another local group from the community did some environmental workshops for the kids and I showed them some of the insects that lived in and around the streams. At night on the plateau above 15,000 feet the stars were infinite above, and the white summer-time tents were lit like lanterns on the grassland below. During one of those black nights, I snuck out between the glowing tents to the stream to bathe for the first time in many days. Even though it was June- there was still a good two or three feet of ice along the edge of the stream to jump over to get to the moving water. I scrubbed off days of grime in the icy brook while taking in the stellar majesty above and tiny dots of life spread out before me as the sounds of laughter and barking dogs floated across the open plain in harmony with the gurgling water. It was a truly delicious taste of life.
