September 28, 1998 Volume 21, No. 3

Exhibit Reveals New Guinea

An exhibit by international documentary photographer Chris Rainier will open on Monday, October 5, at the College’s Handwerker Gallery. The exhibit, Where Masks Still Dance: New Guinea, is free and open to the public. An opening reception is planned for 5:00 p.m., Friday, October 9, at the gallery.

A former assistant to Ansel Adams, Rainier has made a career of photographing the last of the earth’s wilderness areas and indigenous cultures. He has photographed the civil conflicts and wars in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, and has documented many of the world’s most isolated regions, from the North Pole and the continent of Antarctica to the jungles of New Guinea, where he spent 10 years traveling dense forests and wetlands inhabited by more than 1,000 tribes.

Rainier’s photos are displayed in many of the world’s major collections, including the International Center of Photography in New York, La Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. He has received five National Press Association Picture of the Year awards for his work, and his first book, Keepers of the Spirit, was named International Golden Light Photographic Book of the Year in 1994.

"During the months of trekking through the jungle and the long nights talking with village people, I was profoundly moved by the people of New Guinea and their stories," says Rainier. "For all our differences, I saw in many of those I met a reflection of myself, not simply in the parallels of our creation myths or in our need for a culture to sustain us, but in the power of ritual to transform the dark and sometimes monstrous forces unresolved within the human spirit."

The Handwerker Gallery is located in the Caroline Werner Gannett Center. For more information, call 274-3548.