Vanishing Beauty: Indigenous Body Art and Decoration

Two renowned photographers record in stunning detail and variety the practice of body adornment in the world's most remote regions.

Renowned nature photographers Bertie and Dos Winkel traveled to four continents and visited more than thirty indigenous tribes to capture a vast spectrum of body art and adornment. Their subjects--men, women, and children of all ages--make extraordinary use of the materials found in their environments: bone, feathers, teeth, hair, shells, metals, beads, and pigment. While the results are spectacularly different, their motivations are universal--the adornment of the human body to communicate stages in life, stories of courage and grief, exhibitions of rank and fortune, and the exaltation of beauty and virility.

The book's large format lends these large-scale portraits eloquence and serenity. The exquisite detail and intoxicating color of the photographs allow the observer to appreciate the variety of indigenous body art and decoration while the essays in the book remind us that while the rest of the world hungers for the spiritual and exotic, the very essence of these values is being lived out in remote corners--and is rapidly disappearing.