Dr. Françoise Pommaret is a cultural anthropologist (Ph.D). She is a Tibetologist, an eminent Bhutanese specialist, a Director of Research at the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research, France), and an associate Professor at the College of Language and Culture (CLCS), Royal University of Bhutan. She has Published numerous scholarly articles and books on different aspects of the Bhutanese culture. She has co-edited and co-authored: Bhutan: Mountain Fortress of the Gods, Serindia, London, 1997; Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century, the Capital of the Dalai-Lamas, Brill, Leiden, 2003; Bhutan; Tradition and Change, Brill, Leiden, 2007. Her wide audience books in English are Bhutan, a cultural guidebook, Odyssey Guidebook, 1990 and Tibet, an enduring civilization, 2003. She is the recipient of the French Légion d’Honneur, and of the Gold Medal of the National Order of Merit of Bhutan.

Christian J. Creutz is a French freelance photographer, a graduate from the Louis Lumière School in Paris, who has been working in many fields of photography for the last 30 years. His work has covered the areas of corporate, institutional, architectural, and portraiture photography around Strasbourg. In addition, he has travelled around the world to pursue his personal interest in cultural diversity. Among multiple assignments, he has photographed legendary diamonds and rare natural pearls from private and public collections as well as the wonders of Islamic architecture.