Documenting the material culture of the Buchen

The Buchen are performers of rituals, exorcists, actors, storytellers and musicians unique to the Pin Valley in Spiti. Historically, Buchen troupes have toured the villages of Spiti, Upper Kinnaur and parts of Ladakh (and formerly western Tibet) to spread the message and teachings of the Buddha through the medium of entertainment. Buchen are most famous for performing the exorcism ritual entitled the Ceremony of Breaking the Stone, photographed by John Coldstream a century ago, described in detail by the Tibetologist Georges de Roerich in 1932 and contextualised in much greater detail by Pascale Dollfus in 2004. Although the ceremony is now well known and increasingly performed for visiting trekkers and film crews or within local arts and cultural programmes, their winter tours, narrations and theatrical performances of moral and religious folk tales are significantly less researched and possibly disappearing.

In 2014 I returned to Spiti to photograph and record their material culture, specifically the objects connected to Buchen performances and still extant within active and dormant Buchen households: the narrative and ritual texts, thangkas, musical instruments, statues, costumes, masks and ritual objects that Buchen utilise. For a reportage photographer, this process of photographic copying held precious little excitement, but the opportunity to talk around the history and ownership of these objects and to delve into family memories revealed some new understanding of Buchen history, roles, interconnections and status.