With a few friends, we plan to go to India and it will be my second visit to the subcontinent in the year 2015. This time we are heading to Arunachal Pradesh which is absolutely not the India that most visitors know. Mainly because it’s a remote, restricted area where special permits are required and the majority of tourists are discouraged by these long, administrative procedures. For us, of course, such things add a touch of special excitement to a trip and I am really looking forward for this particular expedition. The main objective is of course photography and I would like to continue the project of taking portraits of endangered ethnic groups which we started this year with a fellow photographer, Katja Bidovec, in Ethiopia.
Arunachal is the last remote and isolated territory in extremely populated India. It is squeezed between the borders of Bhutan, China and Myanmar. This is the region where river Siang, later called the mighty Brahmaputra, descends from the Himalayan heights through the gorge that haven’t really been explored. These hard to reach territories give shelter to the last animistic ethnic groups of India who have absolutely nothing in common with the rest of the Hindu culture that prevail in India. Arunachal Pradesh is also one of the last strongholds of the rare and endangered animals like snow leopard, Bengal tiger, gaur or mysterious takin who share last  primeval rainforests with the once notorious headhunters of  Wancho, Konyak and Nocte tribes. Together with the ethnic groups of Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya, they represent the most elaborate ethno-linguistic social system of Asia. Unfortunately this remote piece of land has recently become the playground of overactive Catholic missionaries who are trying to convert the last animistic tribal groups to Christianity by forcing them to abandon their traditional beliefs, as well as several multinational companies who are trying to exploit the natural riches of this untouched part of India. Arunachal is probably one of the last territories where one can still experience the excitement of early adventurers and explorers like Sven Hedin, Nikolaj Przewalski or David Livingstone. With the great respect for the early explorers we would like to add our humble contribution by exploring the last barely known world’s areas and the last traditional tribal societies of the planet that may vanish before we even get to know them well.
So, the basic idea is to photograph people in a portable studio which enables uniform studio-quality lighting regardless of the position of the sun and the available light. It is a kind of homage to Edward S. Curtis native American photos. For this purpose, we’ll use a mobile black tent and two studio off camera strobes to light the portraits in a very precise way. We want to create the same effect as if they were shot in a real photographic studio, although this will be carried out in a very remote place where conditions are harsh and available resources are very basic.  I see this work not only as a photographic project but also a sociological and anthropological contribution for generations to come. The people on the photos will be selected randomly and we won’t add or remove anything from their dresses, outfits or objects that they will be carrying with them at the time.
I am leaving to India with my very good friend, anthropologist and good photographer Mare Lakovič with whom we’ve already traveled to some of the remotest African wilderness in southern Ethiopia.