File:Lhasa, Amban's Yamen from Southeast.jpg

English: This view of the residence of the Amban (a Chinese official), seen from the southeast, is from a collection of 50 photographs of central Tibet acquired in 1904 from the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in Saint Petersburg by the American Geographical Society. The duty of the Amban, according to J. Deniker in his 1903 article "New light on Lhasa, the forbidden city," was "to watch over the Dalai Lama, the latter being nominally under subjection to China." Deniker notes that the "house is a very modest dwelling, surrounded by walls, the door of which is falling into decay." According to the photographer's note, the walls on both sides of the gate facing the south are the remnants of the old walls of Lhasa, which were pulled down in 1721. The palace of the Dalai Lama, Potala, is seen in the distance on the right. The photographs in this collection were taken by two Mongolian Buddhist lamas, G.Ts. Tsybikov and Ovshe (O.M.) Norzunov, who visited Tibet in 1900 and 1901. Accompanying the photos is a set of notes written in Russian for the Imperial Russian Geographical Society by Tsybikov, Norzunov, and other Mongolians familiar with central Tibet. Alexander Grigoriev, corresponding member of the American Geographical Society, translated the notes from Russian into English in April 1904.