Mémoires de l’Himalaya is pleased to announce the deposit of the Lionel and Danièle Fournier photographic collection, generously entrusted to the association by Mrs Danièle Fournier.
Stone statue of a lion on the Imperial Tomb in Chongye (copyright Fournier 1992)
The collection comprises approximately 35,000 analogue photographs, primarily colour slides, together with a smaller number of colour negatives. The images were taken between 1980 and 2001 by Lionel Fournier (1943–2017) and several other authors.
The collection covers the wider Tibetan cultural area — Tibet, Northern India, Nepal, and Bhutan — as well as other regions of Asia such as India, China, Myanmar, and Cambodia. It is particularly significant for the study of architecture and religious art.
From the late 1990s onwards, Lionel Fournier undertook the classification and digitisation of a substantial portion of the material relating to monasteries in the Tibetan world. These digitised resources were subsequently disseminated on DVD to specialists of Tibet.
A detailed inventory of the archive is currently in preparation.
Statue of Songtsen Gampo in the Jokhang (copyright Fournier 1992)