The Tsug Lhakhang, the main temple was buzzing with activity. Leh was hosting an important religious festival at the end of winter. Buddhist congregations from all over Ladakh had come, monks of all ages had taken over the place.

I was preparing to photograph them, installing my camera on its tripod. But for a giant with yellow hair, it's difficult to vanish completely.

A very small boy - he must have been the age of Alban, my grandson - with a shaved head, dressed in a red robe, was patiently waiting at the camera. I lifted him up so he could look at the groundglass, under the focusing cloth. He exclaimed surprise, presumably something like: "but everything is upside down!" Suddenly, the other little monks wanted to see too. They stood in line, kindly waiting their turn to look through the camera, which I had adapted to their height. The queue was getting longer! Finally, even the adults, then the old men, who at first pretended not to pay attention to this profane machine, came in their turn to take a look at the groundglass. Some appeared to be important figures. All of them thanked me with a nice smile.

The next day my phone rang. It was Anne, my daughter-in-law, who called me for the first time since my departure: “Alban woke up this morning saying: I dreamed of grandpa Richard, he was taking photos from the top of a mountain". When I told my Ladakhi friends about this dream, they looked at me in a strange way. “What a beautiful dream! This is a blessing" they told me, suggesting that it had been sent by the masters who had looked through my camera.

Lungta, an artist's book by photographer Richard Petit, is published in seven copies. It comes in the form of a wooden box similar to traditional Tibetan books (formulated in the Perpignan workshop of Michel Wattebled) containing thirty photographs, taken in large format between 2010 and 2018 during four stays in the… Read the following (in French)