Product Description

New Guinea is home to more than one thousand aboriginal tribes - each with its own unique language, customs, and folklore that have changed very little in forty thousand years. In eight trips over the last ten years, photographer Chris Rainier has traveled to the island - to both Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya - to document the lives and rituals of these fascinating peoples in what is the most complete visual study ever made. The result is Where Masks Still Dance - a stunning photographic expedition that captures the distinctive cultures of these indigenous peoples in page after page of hauntingly beautiful black-and-white images. In short essays throughout the book, Rainier recounts the adventures behind the photographs - from trekking through leech-infested jungles to witnessing a ritualistic tribal war "rehearsal" - and notes the often disastrous influence of modern technology and values on the way of life of these simple, natural peoples.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #656618 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 132 pages

From Booklist
There is ethnographic documentation and then there is ethnographic documentation. Rainier is a photographer as artful as any ever born. His photos of the tribal peoples of New Guinea, especially in their ceremonial garb, are as consciously and deliberately beautiful as the photographs of poor Americans by Ben Shahn and Helen Leavitt that they often resemble in composition. Unlike the work of those artists of the Depression era and its aftermath, Rainier's photos are intensely still rather than kinetic, as if consciously posed rather than caught on the fly. Rainier's obsession with detail is as fine lined as any Pre-Raphaelite painter's and as dramatically lit (the range of grays in his monochrome images is richly broad), in those aspects recalling fellow photographer Joel Peter Witkin's pictures of gruesome medical pathology phenomena. Sometimes the masks and body piercings and paintings of his subjects are as disquieting as Witkin's imagery, but only momentarily, for Rainier visibly loves and cherishes the New Guineans and their cultures. Once seen, many of these images may haunt you forever, returning in dreams, welcomely. Ray Olson

Customer Reviews

One of the great photographic journals of our time
This remarkable book first caught my attention at the Australian Museum in Sydney one hot summer day. I was preparing my own expedition to Papua New Guinea in order to write a book on the rarely visited island provinces. I would be doing my own photography. As I leafed through these breathtaking portraits I experienced that shiver at the base of the neck that invariably indicates one is in the presence of great art. Only later came the gut-wrenching realisation that I would never be able to achieve such consummate skill myself (even with my old Nikon F2 and all the best old lenses).
Rainier has a passionate eye for composition, atmosphere and the eloquent possibilities of black and white texture. As you read the detailed and often poetic text accompanying the photographs, you will also find that Chris overcame incredible disasters in conquering this inhospitable environment to bring us these images. In the massive heat and humidity of Papua New Guinea, photographic equipment performs all sorts of horrible tricks at vital moments. Everything seems wet and clammy all the time. His canoe overturned and he lost all his valuable equipment and somehow replaced it to continue his expedition. To even get yourself into the remote areas where some were taken is an achievement in itself and then to emerge from the jungle with high art.......what can one say?
These photographs cross that difficult invisible line that separates art and photography.....very few have the genuis.....Brassai, Cartier Bresson, Eugene Atget and Salgado.....yes, these are Chris Rainier's peers. The images have the immortal immobility of an ancient and inaccessible past recaptured. The quality and sheer size of the prints is superb. All this lead me to convince my publishers to put one of his pictures on the jacket of my own Papua New Guinea book and one of my own more decorative photographs on the back.......a suitable place for this photographic Salieri. Sales are better than expected.
Buy his book as a tribute to a great photographic artist and in the process truly enrich your own cultural horizons.

Visually stunning
This book brought back vivid and fond memories of the time I lived in Papua New Guinea in 1960 -1962. The use of black and white photography was especially effective in capturing the essense of simplicity that represents the people. If you truly wish to see human spirit at it's best, visit New Guinea. If you can't - buy this book!

Rainier's images are transcendental.
I was first exposed to Rainer's work in Smithsonian Magazine (Oct. 97). I strongly urge anyone who has a desire to evolve toward embracing and celebrating the essential oneness of all humanity--from urban jungles to remote small-scale societies--to buy this book. As a documentary filmmaker researching shamanic rituals around the planet, I would hire him in a heartbeat to capture the beauty of the world's cultures with his otherworldly gifts of lighting, detail and penetrating the souls of the subject and the viewer. Mr. Rainer, do you shoot 16mm film? If you (or any of your representitives) read this, please contact me at pjoshua@makani.k12.hi.us. Many thanks.