The exhibition Dignity: Tribes in Transition captures the fleeting period of world history where traditional and contemporary cultures collide. The black and white portraits of Indigenous Peoples pay homage to these imperiled cultures signaling our collective interdependence and fragility. Nobel Laureate Archbishop Tutu states, “The Indigenous Peoples of the world have a gift to give that the world needs desperately, this reminder that we are made for harmony, for interdependence. If we are ever truly to prosper, it will be only together.”
In the words of Robert S. Sobieszek, the late curator of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “The dispassionate remove common to most modern portraits is all but absent in these images; in its stead is a passionate complicity between artist and sitter that allows each subject to be memorialized with both beauty and grace.”
The exhibition and associated book, DIGNITY: In Honor of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, educates viewers on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recently adopted by 148 countries.
