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It all started two years ago when London-based photojournalist Piers Calvert visited a photo exhibition in Bogota, Colombia. There, he saw a photo of Okaina girls wearing body paint, taken by British explorer Thomas Wiffen in 1908. The photograph greatly inspired Piers, who thought the artistry of the paint was beautiful, and got him wondering if this art-form still existed. After some initial research, Piers found that the Okaina had long stopped painting themselves and that the tribe was nearly extinct. He also learned that that Thomas’ 1908 photo was most likely the last photograph of their body-painting tradition. This was a discouraging fact to Piers who says,
In a century in which the camera became ever-more ubiquitous, it seemed strange and sad that no one else had managed to take another picture after 1908.
So, Piers set out to learn if body-painting still existed in Colombia at all and if so, if he could capture it.
Pouring himself into this project, Piers sold his car to fund the series and the travels necessary to complete it. He found that Colombia has over 100 different indigenous tribes, but not all of them practice body-painting. Researching and reaching out to tribes by phone only got him so far, and soon Piers found himself jumping on planes and hoping to make connections. But even securing face to face meetings didn’t guarantee Piers photographic access. He explains,
Today these tribes are still wary, and even bored, of cooperating with people who they see as simply coming in to pillage their resources and get rich off them. My message to them therefore was based around the fact that their culture is disappearing (which they are well aware of) and offering a chance to record some of it. A lot of the communities weren’t interested in working with me, but some of them were and shared my vision.
Piers had very specific ideas for this project. He says,
I really wanted to show how these people are now, as the title suggests—obviously they don’t all wander around naked with blowpipes anymore (although a large number do still use blowpipes, alongside their shotguns). I wanted to do something new, something a little updated, and shoot them in a slightly more modern way than the traditional anthropological, reportage, look-what-I-just-stumbled-upon-in-the-jungle kind of way.
Piers has worked with twelve tribes so far and has sent each of them their photographs afterwards (“by plane, boat, hand, and carrier parrot”), where they’ve been met with delight. He hopes the images will help people recognize the beauty and diversity of these tribes and their ancestral arts. Piers himself has been amazed by what he’s seen while creating this series, saying, “some of the details are really amazing, just simple things such as how on earth do they paint such perfectly straight lines on their own face with just a stick and a tiny shard of mirror.”
“The Way We Are Now” is currently in exhibition at the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) in Bogota, one of the country’s most well-known museums. They also plan to tour the exhibit across other Colombian cities. Piers has received lots of positive feedback from the indigenous world and curators alike, with one indigenous person saying that he had “given them back their dignity.” He now hopes the project will open doors for him to go back and shoot other communities, saying,
The more you try to cover everything, the more you realize you have just scratched the surface!