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The image “Mt. Kailash, Tibet, 2013” is the last photograph in my Sacred Geography series and the only one made with a digital camera. All other photographs appearing in this book are silver gelatin prints created from four by five negatives. The story is this. In summer 2013, I hauled my large-format camera and sheet film into western Tibet in order to make a photograph of the sacred mountain. It was a long way to go for one picture, but it would complete a ten-year project. The peak had eluded me throughout the preceding decade, for reasons either of bad weather or political unrest, and I had wanted to complete the Sacred Geography project with an image of Mt. Kailash and also to ritually circumambulate the mountain along an ancient pilgrimage route. This photographic expedition to Kailash meant I had to carry film through more than A Note on the Last Photograph a dozen security checkpoints equipped with X-ray equipment, transport it across hundreds of miles of challenging terrain, and load the film in wind, humidity, and dust. And then get it back home again for processing. I’d been dragging my feet toward digital work for a number of years, but it became increasingly apparent to me on this final Sacred Geography journey that it might be my last film-based expedition in that part of the world. I exposed twenty sheets of film and then put the big camera away. A few days later, almost on a whim, I made a final photograph of the north face of Mt. Kailash with a digital camera. When I saw the image in the camera monitor I realized immediately that it was the most likely way forward. David Zurick ...

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