Rangefinder Magazine
June 2005

Click Here for printable version of this article.

Chris Rainier’s Ancient Marks by Peter Skinner
A Contemporary Artist’s View of Age-old Practices

“Baba,” with Mursi lip plate, Ndebele neck rings, Maori tattoos, Masai robes and walking stick, West Los Angeles, California. Ancient traditions of body marking find a place near an urban freeway jungle in West Los Angeles.	“Modern primitive” tattoos, Los Angeles River, East Los Angeles, California. In the frenetic, ever-shifting landscape of urban zones, tattoos offer permanence, an anchor of distinction and a fervent emblem countering loss of identity in modern culture.

On seeing yet another stunning book from renowned photojournalist and world traveler Chris Rainier, one gets the impression that here is a photographer who continually looks down dark alleys and, with barely any hesitation, sallies forth, knowing that within the alley’s shadows a story waits to be revealed. And so it is with his latest offering, Ancient Marks (ISBN: 0-9659227-2-3), published by Media 27, Inc., the Santa Barbara-based boutique publisher that specializes in high-quality photography books.

Rainier, who in his earlier years worked as Ansel Adams’ assistant, becoming a master of black and white, was an acclaimed fine art photographer before transitioning to documentary and photojournalistic photography. During the past decade he has earned a reputation as one of the world’s leading documentary photographers and his work has been featured in publications such as Time, Life, Smithsonian Magazine, Islands, The New Yorker and a variety of National Geographic publications. Additionally, he is a co-director of the National Geographic Society Cultures Ethnosphere program, a contributing editor for National Geographic Traveler and a contributing photographer to National Geographic Adventure. And, as his beautifully crafted photographs of body markings, scars and piercings in Ancient Marks testify, he remains a master of black-and-white imagery.

Rainier’s interest in the many ways people use their bodies as a canvas or medium for art had its genesis in the mid-1990s when he was traveling the world photographing tribal cultures, primitive and traditional ways of life that he could see were disappearing off the face of the earth and warranted documentation. “I found myself increasingly fascinated by the myriad forms of body marking I encountered. I had just finished a book on the dancing masks of New Guinea, and I became intrigued with tribal tattoos, piercings, and scarifications, and their context within the human psyche. Here was a compelling art form that was as riveting in its beauty as it was disturbing in the pain and suffering endured by those whose bodies it altered,” says Rainier.

Maori with facial moko, Miliord Sound, South Island, New Zealand. To the Maori, the moko is considered a sacred mark, a unique signature expressing one’s spiritual belief.	Young man with facial scarifications, Boni Village area, Burkina Faso, West Africa. Facial scarification indicates not only a form of beauty but is, as well, a sign of which village, clan and family he is from, and is a form of black magic.	Dusk, Moorea, Tahiti. The marks on the body of this young Tahitian reflect the revival of traditional Polynesian-motif tattoos.

He added that beyond the marks, he was also intrigued by meanings of this artwork and the motives of the people who put themselves through pain ranging from discomfort to agony in having their skin transformed into striking canvases of color, form and content. “Cultural identity, societal order, ancestral heritage, spiritual connection—the more I saw, the more the meanings of the forms spoke to me,” he says.

And so Rainier began a seven-year odyssey—as he puts it, “to follow the flow of tattoo ink and the origin of body marking”—that would lead him around the world, across six continents and much of the Pacific Ocean. Rainier states, however, that Ancient Marks is not intended to be an objective ethnographic study. Rather, it is Rainier’s artistic interpretation of what it means to mark the body in ritual and initiation. “The book is by no means a complete survey of body marking around the globe, but rather a collection of observations from a path of discovery I’ll continue to follow in seeking out traditional cultures that are closely linked to nature,” he says.

While Rainier’s stated goal was not to compile a scientific survey of body marking, his remarkable collection of images and accompanying text (including the informative foreword by Wade Davis as well as Rainier’s own insights) give us an intimate and graphic portrait of body marking, ancient and contemporary, in countries and cultures around the world.

Rainier’s probing camera and selective eye encompass peoples and cultures as diverse as the aborigines of Australia, the Maori of New Zealand, the indigenous people of New Guinea, the Bedouin of North Africa and the Maasai of East Africa. He also traveled to numerous Pacific Ocean island countries, several areas of India, Tibet, Japan, numerous Asian countries and North and South America. Each culture, whether ancient, like that of the Australian aboriginal tribes, or modern, such as the gangs of East Los Angeles, has its own reason for tattooing, carving, or etching the body with patterns varying from simple words to intricate artwork replete in code, legend or religious meaning.

Rainier says, “I turned my camera on these bold designs with their deep and varied significance. For generations, man has given shape to his stories by altering Earth’s landscapes. Some 50,000 years ago, Aboriginals drew the Dreamtime into being on the rocks of the Australian outback. Later, the pharaohs built the pyramids on the eastern edge of the Sahara Desert and pre-Colombians etched the mysterious Nazca lines onto the deserts of northern Peru. To their creators, those altered landscapes served as powerful expressions of who they were. Just as humans have marked the earth, so have we also drawn marks of self-expression upon our own scared geography, our skin, the most intimate canvas of all,” says Rainier.

And as Wade Davis points out in his foreword, the skin of the average human body, if laid out as flat as a map, would cover more than 20 square feet. So, if Leonardo da Vinci had chosen the human form as his canvas, he would have had a work surface four times the size of the Mona Lisa. Many of the graphic images in Ancient Marks illustrate that the artists who use the human body as their canvas make good use of all the available space.

Body marking, as a storytelling avenue for religious or other ancestral purposes, has been around since the dawn of man. And when early navigators such as Captain James Cook “discovered” the Polynesian peoples and documented the amazing art of “tatau” and the Maori facial marking, the moko, they were, to say the least, impressed. True to form, the missionaries who inevitably follow in the footsteps of explorers did their best to stamp out tatau and any other form of body marking among Polynesian people. English sailors, on the other hand, subscribed to this newfound body-based art form, and tattooing became a naval tradition.

The English tars were not the only Europeans to adopt tattooing. English royalty, including King Edward VII and his sons, the dukes of Clarence and York, went to any lengths to have new tattoos etched into their bodies. So, while tattooing might repulse some people, the royals’ propensity to be adorned with tattoos probably added a touch of respectability to the custom, among their peers at least.

When Rainier embarked on this project, he was determined to link his subjects with their environment and so establish a link between the person’s body marking and its meaning. “In all my images I try to make the connection between the environment and the person. With my Ansel Adams background I try to create a landscape and then place someone in that landscape. The spiritual connection between the two is most important,” he says.

He also discovered the popularity of tattooing and body marking is more than a trend or fad—it’s an absolute explosion, especially in the West. “As well as what’s happening in the West, there is a renaissance in ancient cultures, and there is a connection between the two: a need for ritual and a need for bonding within the group, tribe or community. The need to mark the body is a need for connection within one’s own community,” he says.

For proof of that last statement, one need go no further than East Los Angeles, where, as Rainier so eloquently writes, “The endless dreams of Hollywood give way to the lost dreams of the Latino barrios,” and “the streets pulse with urban warfare.” He states that 200 gangs roam a 20-block area, each with its own turf and battle lines, its own family, its own drug links, and its own rituals of initiation, which often entail gunning down a member of an opposing gang and then undergoing extensive tattooing on the chest and back. “In some gangs, those who reach the highest level of honor receive a tear tattoo on their cheek, an affirmation of having killed an enemy in street warfare. Similarly, yet in an entirely different context, young Mursi boys in southern Ethiopia’s isolated Omo Valley are marked through scarification, but only after killing an enemy in battle,” Rainier says.

Given that some of Rainier’s subjects appear downright formidable and certainly don’t exude a welcoming “howdy, stranger, c’mon in and meet the folks” look to outsiders, especially inquisitive photojournalists, how did he gain access and their confidence? As a globe-trotting photojournalist for such publications as Time, Life and the New York Times, documenting cultural issues, famine and war, Rainier is no stranger to being in tricky situations. And he has found the most important commodity in getting to the heart of any subject is time. “I make every effort to take time to get to know the people I am going to photograph. This is essential to connect and build trust and a relationship, even with gang members in East Los Angeles,” he says.

Also, and perhaps a little surprising considering some of his menacing-looking subjects, Rainier rarely felt threatened and only occasionally felt uneasy when making initial contact. “I was a little nervous with the Yakuza, the Japanese equivalent of the mafia, but again, taking time to relate to the people is the key. Once I explained what I was doing and people could see that I respected what they were doing, I had no difficulty getting their cooperation,” he says.

There were times, however, when his patience was stretched to the limit, particularly in more primitive areas where traditional and sacred markings could not be photographed. “There were many times I was told certain markings were sacred and secret, and I was not allowed to photograph them. It certainly took patience finding out which ones I could photograph. It can be challenging, arriving to find out you are not allowed to take pictures,” he says.

Local guides and interpreters were key in gaining Rainier access, and he candidly admits they were his lifelines to the project. He also managed to obtain releases necessary for the book, and pointed out that his respect for people’s privacy and for their body art was crucial in getting cooperation in this area. In addition to local guides, Rainier’s wife Chanda—to whom the book is dedicated—also accompanied him at times as an assistant.

Although he is now exploring the advantages of digital imaging for future projects, Rainier made all the photographs for Ancient Marks on Kodak Tri-X film. His equipment was comprised of a Canon 35mm, a Hasselblad medium format, a Panoramic Fuji. He used a Diana plastic camera to wonderful effect for some of the soft focus images. The only digital facet was in the production phase during which images were scanned and printed for reproduction at Media 27.

Ancient Marks is a powerful and elegant addition to Rainier’s previous books, Keepers of the Spirit and Where Masks Still Dance: New Guinea. A feature of its beautiful design and layout are several panoramic fold-out spreads and bold use of open space complementing evocative images on their facing pages. Thumbnail photographs and explanatory text detail each of the approximately 100 images and a map pinpointing areas in which Rainier photographed highlight the vast area he traveled while gathering this rich collection.

A Dyak elder in Borneo succinctly stated why tattoos are so important to his people: “When we have lost our tattoos—we have lost our culture.” So, while it is up to readers of Ancient Marks to form their own opinions as to why people have mark- ed their bodies for centuries, Rainier sums his opinions up in the final paragraph of his seminal work: “Millennia after the dawn of man’s awakening, we continue to etch the geography of our bodies as we have always marked the landscape of the earth. In creating these sacred forms, we forge a critical element of human existence—our identity.”

A collector’s limited edition of Ancient Marks is available from the publisher Media 27 at www.media27.com/. For more information about the Ancient Marks project, visit www.ancientmarks.com/, where information about artist-signed limited edition prints can also be found.

Finally, it must be asked of Chris Rainier: “Any personal tattoos or tribal scars gathered on the way, that we should know about?” Not yet, but perhaps something is in the works. “Chanda and I agreed that when we finished the entire project we would get one—so, off to Polynesia we go to ‘go native’ and get a tatau.”

Freelance writer/photographer and author Peter Skinner has more than 22 years experience in the photo industry in public relations, media liaison, corporate communications and workshop production and coordination. His magazine articles and photography have been published internationally and he has co-authored or edited numerous publications and books. He can be reached at: prsskinner@bigpond.com.