In the foothills of the Himalayas where Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand once knew no boundaries, lies a region of Southeast Asia evocatively known as the Golden Triangle. Home to some of the world’s oldest civilizations, this expanse has served over millennia as a cultural and historical crossroads of ancient migrations from the highlands of China and Tibet, trade routes linking India and Mongolia, and serpentine passages along the great rivers of Asia.

With such movement and interchange, the Golden Triangle harbors a staggering number and variety of peoples living in remote hill villages, who have effectively safeguarded their individuality. Each of the over one hundred and thirty groups and subgroups represents a unique world, distinctive in features, language, faith, customs, dress, and arts.

The Portraits that follow offer a glimpse of the wondrous diversity of our humanity. They also reveal the special charm of each individual who observes you as you observe them.  The Connecting Gaze.

For ethnic groups that shelter on the steep mountain slopes or tops in the remote reaches of the Golden Triangle, family is of utmost consequence, seeing as members depend solely on themselves to live in such isolated, challenging surroundings.

The concept of Family is also expansive, for it extends into multiple spheres in the human world. Households are composed of a multi-generational, extended family network related by descent and marriage. Families are commonly affiliated with a patrilineal clan, which gives order to all social, political, economic, and religious interactions throughout the village and wider community.  The sense of familial relations grows as each major ethnic group embodies numerous subgroups, speaking a range of regional languages. In all these cases the ethnic bloodline runs deep, connecting each person to a vast diaspora.

The reach of Family also extends through time and space into the supernatural world as every newborn is directly connected in an unbroken chain to the first ancestors, who live contemporaneously in his home to guide and protect him.

There was a time when, entering into any of the small ethnic villages that dot the mountains of Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and China, a visitor would be taken aback by the timeless sense of homogeneity. A singular impression would arise of being in the presence of people united by common origins, shared mores, and collective spiritual faith. Their garments alone, with their distinctive signature colors, style, ornamentation, and silver adornments, herald to others their unique identity, and to themselves a deep sense of belonging.

At closer look, it is understood that while each household works independently to feed and clothe their family members, interdependence with the full Community remains vital for the survival of all. This is seen in the numerous tasks and activities that support the welfare of the entire village.

And when it is time to supplicate spirits and observe seasonal events, all community members come together to celebrate with music and ceremonies that anchor them to their life-source, reunite them to their ancestors, align them to their deities, and preserve their collective memory.

Home has many connotations for the ethnic groups that once roamed the vast expanse of Himalayan foothills. Imagine a time without national borders, when small indigenous groups migrated freely in a southerly trajectory from mountain to mountain along the great rivers of Asia, seeking fertile land so they could begin again a seven-year cycle of slash-and-burn farming.

In this sense, home is an ever-changing location, which conjures new stories and songs of place, be it forests or fields, rivers or mountains. Home is also a destination, a village high in the jungles and mountains from which you set out in the morning to hunt, harvest, barter, or visit, and to which you return each night.

And home is the personal structure of bamboo and thatch you constructed alongside your family and neighbors that keeps your relatives and ancestors safe from the elements and evil spirits.

From the hearth to the altar, the central door to the animal compound, the field to the mountain vista, these images reflect Home in its many facets.

The mountain peoples of the Golden Triangle live close to nature and listen to an earth that is never silent. Their universe is perceived as a dynamic, inseparable whole, and its rhythms can be found everywhere, from the celestial cycles of sun, moon, and seasons to the arc of life from birth to death. In a harsh and variable wilderness, survival depends soley on their daily efforts, their resourcefulness, their wisdom gleaned from ancestors, and full awareness of the physical world.

The images in the Rhythm of Days trace the tasks that men, women, and children of the mountains perform each day to survive and thrive.

In the eternal continuum of time, music and ritual mark the significant phenomena of the earth, following the Spiral of Seasons and man’s activities that accompany them. Ceremonies and festivals connected to planting, harvesting, and hunting revolve around lunar cycles and weather patterns in a never-ending quest for food and survival in challenging elements.

Such occasions call for joyful celebration in times of plenty and entreaty in times of dearth; and for sacrifices to the pantheon of supernatural beings that orchestrate the universe, to request their counsel, to demonstrate deep respect, and to seek their blessings.

Ceremonies, animated by music and ritual enactments, are intimately bound to the Arc of Life, ushering every member of the community through major portals of initiation during his incarnation on earth.  Each animist group of the Golden Triangle, embued in singularly distinctive traditions, observes these thresholds of life—from fertility, birth, childhood, adolescence, courtship, marriage, transmitting wisdom, healing, to funerals—in elaborate, extended rituals. That these diverse groups celebrate, bless, honor, heal, and bid farewell in their own way produces an extraordinary fusion of cultural practices and  pantheon of spirits, souls, and ancestors in this corner of the world.

Southeast Asia is home to some of the world’s oldest religions, which have converged on migration paths and trade routes, and intermingled over the millennia.  In ethnic communities, this takes form as animism, a doctrine that the natural world is organized, is ‘animated,’ by supernatural beings that inhabit all things and beings – in nature, the physical world, the spirit world, and the body.  All ethnic groups of Southeast Asia have developed an intricate web of deities, ancestors, souls, and spirits who shape their world and with whom they interact on a daily basis.

Buddhism still retains many of these earliest beliefs, with its reverence for balance among all entities in the universe.  Shaped by the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha, in 5th-century India, the faith now predominates in SE Asia and has grown to become the fourth largest religion in the world.

What’s Black and White and Red All Over attempts to reveal ethereal subtleties of faith in visual form.