Indonesia: Borneo Games

In this 1968 photo taken in the center of Borneo’s rain forest, Dyak women are playing a popular game. On their way to pound rice, one early afternoon after lunch, they are moving their pestles in and out on the ground to try to catch the ankles of a woman jumping in and out of them.

Men and boys have their own game of skills. Their goal is to use their large wooden tops to bang those of their opponents. Holding their own tops, some of the players are waiting on the side to enter the game.

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Indonesia: Cooking Rice The Dyak Way

This new 1968 Photo taken at night in Indonesia’s central Borneo shows Dyaks cooking rice in sections of bamboo.

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Indonesia: Dyak Dance For A Stranger

In my 1968 crossing of Borneo I was received in Dyak longhouses with music, dances, and songs. Male and female dancers were virtuosos in their hieratic expressions.

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Indonesia: Men Of Timor

A 1968 portrait of men of Kupang, capital of the Indonesian part of Timor Island. I shot it while on assignment for Venture magazine to illustrate Christopher Lucas’ article, Indonesia is a Happening, which he later turned into a book.

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Ecuador: Colorado Male Elegance

On the western slopes of Ecuador’s Andes Mountains near Santo Domingo, a Colorado man reddens his hair with achiote, soft grains he extracted from the green pods in the foreground. Achiote easily turns into a paste when rubbed between hands.

In Brazil, where achiote is known as urucu, Yanomami Indians press it into oblong balls to paint their bodies as if with markers.

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Ecuador: Colorado Indian

Colorado elder with hair reddened with achiote, a general custom of his tribe, which dwells in the lower Western Andes Mountains, near Santo Domingo de los Colorados. That custom is at the origin of the Spanish name by which they are best known.

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Colombia: Managing The Small Farm

Along a small road in the Cauca Department’s share of the Cordillera Oriental, one of three Andean cordilleras splitting Colombia north-south, a spirited farmer is splitting logs for her family’s fire while watching over her two small children nearby.

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Colombia: Walking In The Rain

Walking through a rainstorm along a road in Colombia’s Cundinamarca department, this old farmer had wrapped himself in a large plastic sheet.

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The Wonderful World Of Madagascar’s Périnet Natural Reserve

Professional people and wildlife photography are full-time jobs, and each requires its own skills and experience. I love both people and animals but can’t hold two full-time jobs. So I have dedicated myself to photographing people, mostly away from tourists’ maps.

However, I have had occasional need to shoot wildlife. One of them, a few years ago, happened in Madagascar. I was photographing the country for two books on that subject. And on their lists of needed illustrations were the Périnet Natural Reserve and its variety of lemurs and chameleons. 

Fortunately, I needed no special skills or experience to photograph chameleons and lemurs. I could have touched the chameleons. As for the lemurs, they were as curious about me as I was about them. And, charming animals, they let me get quite close to them too. I spent a wonderfully quite morning in their company.

Ring-tailed lemurs (lemur catta)

Verreaux's sifaka lemur (propithecus verreaux)

Verreaux's sifaka lemur (propithecus verreaux)

Grey bamboo lemur (hapalemur briseus)

Brown lemur (lemur fulvus)

Ruffed lemur (lvarecia variegata)

Ruffed lemur (lvarecia variegata)

Ruffed lemur (lvarecia variegata)

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Colombia: Bogota Gold Museum

In my last post, with the 15 pictures of looters of pre-Colombian graves in Colombia, I mentioned how many of the best stolen pieces end up in the pre-Columbian collection of Bogota’s Gold Museum. At least in 1979, at the time I was photographing the looters at work. Hereafter are eight of the pictures I took at the museum that year.

Funeral chamber of a pre-Columbian cacique.

Funerary mask and other gold ornaments that followed a cacique to his grave.

Tumaco gold mask.

Calima gold mask.

Tolima breast plates.

Muisca raft carrying a new cacique, coated with gold dust, and lesser chiefs to the middle of Lake Guatavita. There they unloaded gold and emeralds into the lake and El Dorado, the Gilded One, ritually washed the gold dust off his body in it.

Gloomy lake Guatavita. In a vain effort to drain the lake and get hold of its legendary treasures, greed-crazed conquistadors during the Spanish conquest carved out the gap in the far shore.

The Gold Museum makes you enter its last room, behind heavy steel doors, in total darkness, the better to overwhelm your eyes and mind when the lights slowly come up. The room’s walls are lined with 12 showcases like this one, each crammed with more gold loot than the next.

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