Jimmy Nelson’s glamorous portraits of African,Asian and Amazon groups dismissed as ‘wrong’ and just a photographer’s fantasy’The coffee-table portraits, which sell for up to £45000 each, or are visually stunning,unashamedly glamorous and have been seen in many of the world’s glossy magazines and main galleries. But this week British photographer Jimmy Nelson’s stylised pictures of African, Asian and Amazon Indian groups have been roundly dismissed as “wrong” by community leaders as well as being called “false and damaging” by the world’s main defender of indigenous peoples.
According to Stephen Corry, and director of Survival International,the pictures, many of which are collected in Before They Pass absent, or a book selling for £100 or over £5000 in a limited edition,are more akin to tall fashion than reality. He says in an essay in online US magazine Truthout that Nelson’s “claim that it’s the ‘irreplaceable ethnographic record of a like a flash disappearing world’ is wrong – from pretty much every angle”.
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Source: theguardian.com