Vanishing cultures

“Vanishing cultures” is a long-term photography project, in which we want to introduce various autochthonous ethnical groups and people in the most remote places in the world, where many live as they lived hundreds of years ago but are, even if they are very remote and hard to reach, on the verge of extinction. The causes of their vanishing are many. Sometimes the cause is the greed of the people that constantly strive for new energy sources and resources; these are most common in the far-out, hard to reach places of this planet, but other times the cause can also be modern technology, which unstoppably penetrates even the most resiliently traditional tribes. The main idea of the project is to photograph these autochthonous ethnical groups in a mobile studio that allows repeatable studio-quality lighting, no matter of the suns position or the natural light. The project is homage to the photographer Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) and his iconic photographs of the North American Indians, which he captured on the verge from the 19th to the 20th century. He photographed for 24 long years and to this day, his photographs represent rare and an indispensable view of a long-by vanished culture. These photographs do not only have a high artistic value, but are also essential elements of the anthropology field itself.

  This is a team-based project with the talented studio photographer Katja Bidovec. We use mobile tents made out of black fabric and 2 or more, strong studio flashlights; with their help we can very accurately highlight portraits of random chosen representatives of the various tribes. We want to create a magical feeling, as if the photographs were made in a real photo studio, although they were made in very hard to reach places and sometimes under very dangerous situations. Our project “Vanishing cultures” is not only a photography project with esthetic values, but we also see it as a sociological and anthropologic contribution for many generations to come. Till now we have managed to photograph on 2 different locations: by the Omo River and in the near standing Turkan Lake, and in the far-out reaches of the country Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland, on the borders of the bigger countries India, Bhutan, Tibet and Myanmar.