Honorable Mention
Maiden Nun
DESCRIPTION
A maiden nun looks at the camera in an open-air lecture at Yarchen Gar, the largest residential and scholastic area of Buddhist nuns in the world. In Tibet, some female children are sent to monasteries to practice asceticism; they often face the conflict between the constraint of religion and the temptation of society. AUTHOR
Born in Shenyang, China, Luo Jian is a photographer based in Paris, France. After working 10 years as a photojournalist in the Chinese press industry, he decided to move to France where he did a 2-year-residence at Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles and a Master degree in Arts Plastiques at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.For more than a decade, Luo Jian works on a series of documentary photography on Tibet, the remote mysterious land of China. He captures the monastic life that reflects the changing relations between the religious institutions and the local authorities. Today, Luo Jian explores the social, physical, and religious aspects of various societies and presents them through his lenses.