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Jimmy NelsonJimmy Nelson - VII 274 // VII Ladakh, India, Photography 2012, Printed After2012
2012
About the Item
All available sizes & editions for each size of this photograph:
24.41 x 43.31 - Edition of 9
39.37 x 70.87 - Edition of 6
55.12 X 102.36 - Edition of 3
As a photographer, beyond the actual creative process, nothing could be more gratifying than people wanting to see my work. My previous book of photographs Before They Pass Away, published in 2013, was more popular than I could have dreamed of. Its success and the responses to it have enabled and encouraged me to continue, and the results are contained in this book.
I take pictures. I make images. Unlike film, which inundates you with movement and sound, defining the ongoing moment, a photograph just sits there quietly while you decide what it is saying. Yes, I am trying to convey something with my photographs, but I am certainly not hoping to tell you what to think. You will, of course, interpret the images in this book in whatever way suits you. What I am hoping for is an open narrative. I strongly believe that artists must always be part of the conversation. We don’t exert tangible power, but we can reflect, ask questions and share ideas.
If we are not very careful and very focused, this planet’s rich tapestry of human cultures will be completely unravelled and re-woven. We all know it is already happening. To paraphrase the great anthropologist Margaret Mead: I fear that while we were born into a polychromatic world of cultural diversity, our grandchildren will awake into a monochromatic world never having known anything else.
We know now how important biodiversity is to a healthy physical environment and how much damage our rapacious appetite for agricultural and urban land has done to it. The parallels with cultural diversity are clear. Peoples with unique cultural identities need to be truly and effectively respected, cherished and supported, for them and for all of us. Our ethnodiversity, our ‘ethnosphere’, must also be protected. It is the sum total and manifestation of all the thoughts, dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations and intuitions produced by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. It is all that we have created through our endeavours as a wildly inquisitive and astonishingly adaptive species. In short, it is humanity’s greatest legacy. Let us ensure that the ultimate legacy is not its own destruction.
The new global language is not Chinese, English or Spanish; I believe it is the visual language
of photography. The photographs in this book are for you and they are also for the people in the photographs. I hope they can be part of an exchange. Whenever I revisit a community somewhere on this planet, and I do so often, I always bring with me the photographs I took of them the previous time. I show them the pictures I took of them and I show the pictures I have taken of people from other communities around the world.
The idea that isolated peoples without a global perspective could get an even slightly better sense of their uniqueness and importance in the world through the work I do is very meaningful to me. I hope it nurtures a pride that will help them to be more resilient to the pressures around them. Members of threatened communities often feel very alone and vulnerable to the forces of the industrialized world, and perhaps knowing more about others facing similar problems will embolden them, encourage them to reflect on the value of their culture in a global context and be even more determined to preserve their way of life.
Perhaps some of the beautiful people portrayed in this book will seem strange to you. They are no more or less strange than you are to them. They are perhaps different from you, almost certainly with respect to their dress and often in aspects of the way they think and behave. But there is much more that binds us than separates us. Not so long ago, most of the communities in the world lived more like they do than we in the industrialized world do now. Without wishing to romanticise their sometimes difficult lives or deny the benefits we enjoy, it is becoming pretty obvious that we don’t have a monopoly on wisdom. And when we make mistakes, we do so on a massive scale. Just look at the plastic in the seas and the food we eat, the shrinking corals and forests, and the impending water crises all over the world.
And at the same time communities that have every right to exist as they want to and may well have some ideas of their own to share, ideas that we may benefit from, are succumbing to the pressures and temptations of our monoculture. I believe that part of the reason my images have been the catalyst for so much discussion is that they tap into a subconscious fear in us all: the fear that we are losing something precious, in the world and in ourselves. Others went before me and inspired me. Chief among them was Edward Sheriff Curtis who documented the Native Americans at the
beginning of the twentieth century, as well as other greats such as Wilfred Thesiger, Irving Penn and Edward Steigen. Their work has taught me an enormous amount about the importance of documenting disparate communities and their rituals and beliefs.
It would be disingenuous of me, however, not to be categorically clear that as a photographer I am also driven by the purely visual. I choose to visit people whose illuminating beauty appeals to me. I simply want to enjoy and share the unique beauty of all the varieties of human life. It is part of the story I want to tell. There are those who will say that means I am part of the problem. And that possibility is a dilemma and a paradox that is inherent to what I do. True or not, I hope and believe I can be part of the solution. Many communities in this book are under existential threats of one kind or another, and given the very real possibility that some of them may indeed pass away, we must do all we can ensure they can co-exist with us in modern times. This will not happen without intelligent plans. Theirs and ours.
Beyond the eternal search for aesthetic perfection and the desire for a better world, there is another, even less easily defined drive: my intense affinity with the tribal way of life, a way of life with structure, closeness to nature and certainty of belief. I sometimes feel an urge to be one of them. The more isolated, the more difficult to reach, the more exertion and hard work it takes, the more powerful the effect; you have to pay in kind for the honour of mingling with them. Spending time within small remote communities is addictive. It puts me in a heightened state, makes me feel truly alive. It is a bright, colourful, ecstatic feeling that I want to share with a world that sometimes feels emotionally beige.
I knew that as this journey of discovery progressed, I would need a kindred spirit to share this creative journey, to be part of the extraordinary encounters that took place and to document and record the deeper layers of human interconnection. I met Stephanie van der Wiel, a young Dutch lawyer at Leiden’s National Museum of Ethnology, where I was presenting an exhibition of material from my first book. With her intelligence, passion and commitment she outshone all other prospective candidates and she soon became my co-creator on this artistic odyssey. Through her adopted
role as filmmaker, producer and writer she soon became indispensable and ended up making her own essential contribution to this book.
‘From a very young age, I had a constant urge to explore, whether that meant roaming the endless dunes of the southern Dutch coastline where I grew up, or joining my father, a commercial airline pilot, who flew me around the world. I knew there was something more out there.
Despite this, I chose the more trodden path, and studied civil law. I didn’t dare listen to my inner voice. But Jimmy’s searing creativity and boundless enthusiasm for the beauty of the world resonated powerfully within me. His images and stories reawakened something. This was it. This had to become my journey too.
Together, Jimmy and I braved the stifling desert heat in Angola, battled the freezing cold in Mongolia and climbed the highest mountain peaks in the Peruvian Andes. We ate worms with the Kaluli in Papua New Guinea, danced all day and night with the Wodaabe in Chad, and played in the Nile with Mundari children in South Sudan.
My role within the project allowed me to fulfil some of my wildest dreams. We were welcomed by so many very different people. They let us experience something of their lives, and we wanted to do something in return. Everyone has a unique story and we wanted to share theirs with the world – you will find many of them in this book. These intimate encounters led to a treasure trove of insights into the lives of individuals and their communities.
Many of the communities we visited already have some digital connection to the rest of the world, and it seems inevitable that many more will soon be joining them. It’s my dream that now and in the future we will gather together around the digital fireplace and continue to share these and many more stories, for generations to come.’
While Stephanie and I explored the furthest reaches of the earth, back in Amsterdam a support unit was growing that would facilitate us in our global quest. Coco became the project manager, overseeing the multitude of diverse daily office activities and caring for the ever-expanding crew:
Peter joined us as her right-hand man, managing the finances and contractual side, and Marit, Tessel, Larissa, Yvy, Bob, Michelle and Anouk completed our passionately dedicated team. With my team in place and a more clearly defined mission it soon became my dream to further dialogue among the communities themselves and with the developed world. We in the developed world have a particular responsibility, because we have the advantage of a global perspective that some of these isolated communities by definition do not. Often, they are unaware of the distinctive qualities or value of their own culture in a global context. Many people growing up in an environment increasingly dominated by the Western world don’t even consider their culture to be worth protecting.
Should we in the encroaching developed world attempt to impose or preserve a perhaps romanticised version of their culture?
Certainly not.
Should we facilitate them and encourage them in the preservation of their traditional way of life?
Perhaps, yes!
We all come from the same source and together we are going through an amazing period of cultural evolution. I hope that all our peoples make it through this twenty-first century together. If we are to do so we will all need some of the humility, vulnerability, kindness, generosity and good humour we have encountered so often on our travels. I can only hope that something of these feelings comes across in the photographs and stories that Stephanie and I share in this book.
This photograph will be printed once payment has been received and will ship directly from the printer the artist works with. Your certificate of authenticity will be shipped separately from your print and in most cases will ship directly from the gallery.
The Gallery is more than happy to provide clients with the next available edition number, however, the Gallery can only guarantee the specific edition number the client will receive once payment has been received.
- Creator:Jimmy Nelson (1967, British)
- Creation Year:2012
- Dimensions:Height: 39.37 in (100 cm)Width: 70.87 in (180.01 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Greenwich, CT
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU25113589302
Jimmy Nelson
Over the course of a prolific career that has spanned more than 30 years, artist Jimmy Nelson has captured profound and enduring images of the world’s most remote tribes and indigenous peoples. His rich color photography, portraits and landscapes seek to tell the stories of many diverse cultures and explore the impact of the modern age on their traditions and life.
Nelson was born in 1967 in Sevenoaks, Kent, and spent his early childhood traveling the world with his father, a geologist. At the age of seven, Nelson was sent to a Jesuit boarding school in the North of England, where he spent the next ten years of his life.
Nelson journeyed to Tibet in his late teens — he had lost all of his hair owing to an autoimmune disorder and thought that the Tibetan monks might be more accepting of his appearance than his affluent British classmates were. The year-long trip afforded him the opportunity to photograph the East Asian region, which had only recently opened its borders to foreigners. In 1988, Nelson’s images were published in several worldwide publications, garnering international acclaim. He secured assignments to cover a range of world events as a photojournalist — among them, Russia’s involvement with Afghanistan and the war in former Yugoslavia.
In 1994, Nelson and his wife, Ashkaine, embarked on an ambitious project titled “Literary Portraits of China,” which captured images of what were then the country’s lesser seen corners. It took 40 months to complete, and his photos were later exhibited at the People’s Palace in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
Later, Nelson traveled the globe to not only document indigenous cultures through his figurative photography but to discover how they were surviving in the contemporary world. This project resulted in his first book, Before They Pass Away. It was published in 2013 and an expanded edition debuted in 2020. The Jimmy Nelson Foundation was established in 2016 in order to raise awareness about the subjects of Nelson’s photography. Homage to Humanity, which features hundreds of photos of indigenous people all over the world, was published in 2018.
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