Disappearing cultures. Myanmar’s and Chinese spiritual photos by Oliver Klink

2017-03-23

Black-and-white photos by Oliver Klink are interesting cultural sketches about life in remote corners of our planet. The travel photographer tells about Myanmar, the Kingdom of Bhutan and the isolated Chinese provinces.

Gentle

Oliver Klink is a experienced traveler. Realizing that the globalization absorbs original cultures, he focuses on the authenticity, on the traditions, and common life of ordinary people in rural places. His pictures are an encyclopedia of life; photos of diversity and uniqueness.

Oliver is a physicist, was born in Switzerland, and became a photographer. He is one of the few photographers who printing his works using the piezography technique.

Laborious

As Klink says, his teachers were Art Wolf, Chris Rainer, Jimmy Nelson, Amy Vitale - travelers who traveled half the world with a camera in their hands.

Community Affair

The transition from a pre-modern or traditional to a modern society is frequently described as modernization. Modernization has had the consequences of diminishing the relevance of old world customs, rituals, familial and social relationships.

The set of photos “Consequences” addresses the current threats to natural and cultural diversity, sites where modernity, tradition, and wild lands collide. It is an elegy for what is vanishing and a celebration of those cultures on the fringe of modern society resilient enough to maintain their vibrancy.

As we drift toward a blandly amorphous, generic world, as cultures disappear and life becomes more uniform, we as a people and a species, and Earth itself, are deeply impoverished. The images take the viewer on a roller coaster ride of aesthetic of disappearance, with hope that the fading traditions are not permanent and irreversible.