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Photographer's 'Tribes' is a cultural adventure
May 14, 1997
Web posted at: 9:59 p.m. EDT (0159 GMT)NEW YORK (CNN) -- Celebrated nature photographer Art Wolfe has turned the lens of his camera on the world's indigenous peoples for a new book, "Tribes," to be released this month.
His gripping images capture the culture of peoples whose daily lives have changed little for centuries.
"I think people are constantly jolted when they see photos of stone-age cultures that live as they always have lived," says Wolfe, a University of Washington graduate who first dreamed of being a painter before picking up a camera.
Many of Wolfe's other books -- 22 in all, including the award-winning "Light on the Land" and "Migrations" -- make haunting landscapes and inquisitive wildlife accessible to all. "Tribes" celebrates the pageantry of the people.
"In Australia, in the outback, the aboriginals will have dreamtime dances," he says. "The elders will adorn themselves in the cotton plant seeds. What as amazing about it was I was sweltering under 110-degree heat, and yet they were plastering their heads with all these leaves and cotton."
Wolfe photographed mountain tribesmen of Papua New Guinea as they competed to see who had the most elaborate costume, and Dani tribesmen in Irian Jaya wearing pig tusks in their noses.
"I brought (photographs of the Dani) to the Samburu tribesmen of North Kenya," he says. "And they saw that and they just freaked out. They thought, 'Wow, what a bizarre behavior.'"
The photographer -- whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Life, National Wildlife, Natural History and other publications -- says the tight close-ups focusing on the eyes of the tribesmen serve to give the viewer "the same emotion or the power or the uneasiness that I might have felt at the time."
In addition to "Tribes," Wolfe this month also is releasing "Rhythms" -- long-exposure photography capturing motion in nature.
Correspondent Mary Ann McGann contributed to this report.
Related site:
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- The Mountain Zone Art Wolfe's Web site
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