Lineage

Lineage is an atlas of the world's traditional peoples. Each one photographed the same way: one white backdrop, one quiet light, nothing borrowed from the landscape around them.

Taking away the setting takes away the postcard. What remains is the person, and the long line of people behind them. I have spent seventeen years travelling to places where these ways of life still hold. I did not go to document an ending. I went to stand in front of people who are still here.

The frame is deliberate. Each portrait carries the black edge of an old wet plate and film rebate, the way the first portraits of peoples were made, so that these sitters are given the weight they were always owed.

Where I learned a sitter's name, it is credited. Where I did not, the work is titled for the community and the place. Every person was photographed with their agreement.