Bio

Diane Barker is a photographer and artist based in a small Worcestershire village. She was born in a pub and still lives in the home of her birth. She studied Art History at the University of East Anglia and went on to do an MA involving a landscape photo project at the University of Central England. Diane's nomadic roots trace back to the 70s as a hippie living in a camper van in America, and at age 25 she met her first Tibetans, when the 16th Karmapa and his entourage visited Wales.

In her 30s she became a painter, exhibiting widely in London and around the UK, and in her 40s photography took over when she began travelling to India. A Buddhist boyfriend, teaching English to Tibetan monks in Sikkim, took her into the heart of the Tibetan community and she began documenting their lives along with those of Indian village people in the Himalayan foothills.

She first encountered Tibetan nomads, or drokpa, in 1999 in the Changthang of Ladakh and fell in love with the rawness, beauty and simplicity of their traditional earth-based culture. Ever since then the Tibetan nomads became her photographic obsession and the subject of her heart. She has travelled extensively in eastern Tibet (now part of Sichuan Province, Gansu, Qinghai, Yunnan and TAR, China) documenting nomad life.

She has created exhibitions which have toured around the UK, as well as to Mumbai, India. Many of her photos have been exhibited in group shows in the UK, India and New York. Her work has also appeared in many books, publications and on-line platforms.

Her solo published works include "Portraits of Tibet" (Graffeg/Bird Eye Books), "Tibetan Prayer Flags" (Connections Book Publishing) and "The Eternal Land" (East West Publications).

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