Dignity
Dana Gluckstein has photographed indigenous peoples from America to Bhutan for over 30 years. See striking images, and commentary, from her new book Dignity.
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
This cover image is deeply meaningful to me. It was one of the first portraits I created on my earliest journey to Haiti almost 30 years ago. She is my beacon and set the course for my lifetime body of work. She reminds us that we must listen to the voices of the ancient ones if our planet is to survive. The ability to capture time standing still, to witness the eternity that resides in a moment, is what I strive to achieve in a portrait session and the resulting images.
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
The sorrow depicted in this image reflects the decimation of a culture and the struggle for dignity and renewal – a pattern of destruction and renaissance that exists across the globe.
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
Amidst such degradation and dispossession, there are stories of hope. This image depicts the cultural renaissance of Native Hawaiians who seek to heal the centuries of cultural erosion and loss of identity that followed the theft of their kingdom. Now their children attend Hawaiian cultural immersion programs where they learn to speak their once forbidden Hawaiian language, to dance their traditional hula, and to feel proud of their heritage.
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
Years ago, I met a beautiful man in a dusty roadside market in Kenya. With tribal markings on his forehead and a torn western t-shirt, he was caught between his traditional village and the modern capitol of Nairobi. He asked me to take his portrait. I called this image “Tribal Man in Transition” a thematic precursor to my current photographs.
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
Tribal girls, one with a plastic toy cell phone dangling from a necklace, the other with a bra and no shirt, depict a collision of traditional, modern and missionary cultures.
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
In Zambia, impoverished boys from the Goba tribe, knowing that nothing remained of their authentic ceremonial adornments, made cardboard masks for their portrait.
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
The images from Bhutan depict the contradictions facing this ancient and mystical Himalayan culture whose admirable gross national product is measured in moments of happiness rather than the acquisition of material things. An onslaught of Bollywood and Hollywood images since television’s introduction in 2000, however, threaten traditional values. At a religious festival, a school boy dressed in his traditional gho crouches with his toy rifle.
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
Revered Native American scholar, Oren R. Lyons, Faithkeeper, Turtle Clan, Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs, Haudenosaunee, offers a profound instruction for the world’s decision makers in the introduction to DIGNITY, “When you sit in council for the welfare of the people, think not of yourself, nor of your family, or even your generation. Make your decisions for the seventh generation coming so that they may enjoy what you have here today. If you do this, there will be peace.”
Photograph © Dana Gluckstein
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