Gyalyum Kunzang Dechen Tsomo Namgyal

Gyalyum Kunzang Dechen Tsomo Namgyal was the queen mother of Sikkim. She was going once every six years or so to Tibet to see her relatives because travelling was not that easy at the time. She was a Tibetan from Lhasa, from the Rangsha family, one of the Six Clans. She went to Central Tibet around 1935 or 1936 when she took many pictures herself with an Agfa camera she brought with her. This trip was a pilgrimage. On her 1942 journey she took her daughter (b. 1937) with her. The Queen Mother went again 1950. All her pictures of central Tibet however are from the 1935 journey because later she didn’t go on pilgrimage. She didn’t take pictures from Lhasa because she was from there. The only pictures she took in Lhasa were of relatives on the roofs but no picture of the Potala or Jokhang for example.