Inspired by a sense of adventure drawn from growing up in the forested countryside of Sussex, Piers set off across Colombia’s many jungles visiting several of it’s indigenous groups to try and document what body-painting traditions they still practise.

Using a palette of organic and earthy colours, his portraits are a celebration of the beauty and diversity of Colombia’s many indigenous groups, and a snapshot of to what extent these tribes still remember their ancestral arts today.

The project began with a photo taken of painted Okaina girls in the Colombian Amazon in 1908 by a self-styled British explorer Thomas Whiffen:

‘After stumbling upon this fabulous image by Whiffen of a style of body-painting that had likely been long since forgotten [only 50 Okaina tribesmen now remain], I was saddened to think that this was quite probably the last ever photographic record of these beautiful skills. The fact that it had been taken over a hundred years ago, since which time the camera has become ever more accessible, it seemed to me a terrible lost opportunity that nobody ever took more pictures of this artistic tradition before it vanished along with the Okaina people themselves.

‘The story of our time is one of cultural assimilation, with traditions, past-times and languages fast being lost across the globe, and merged into one great homogenous soup. Anthropologists, linguists, scientists, photographers and videographers are all scrambling to record what they can from thousands of different cultures that are fast disappearing, lest they soon be gone forever.’

‘There is particularly little photographic record of Colombia’s indigenous groups, since the civil conflict, now going for over 50 years, has generally made working in the jungle there very difficult. The only photographers to have spent much time in the Amazonas, Vaupés or Guaviare in recent decades have been conflict photographers, and they have been covering just that. Whereas we have seen a steady stream of images, coming out of the comparatively safer jungles of Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela for many years now, there is a noticeable absence of considered photographic portraiture coming out of Colombia ever since ethnobotanist Richard Evans Schultes was there in the 1950’s.’

‘The strength of this project is essentially that it is a collaboration between myself and very talented [indigenous] artists. Having the opportunity to work with them was a huge privilege and it is their remarkably intricate skill that in most cases that really allows the pictures to shine.’ - Piers Calvert

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