The forest call

Four years ago, photographer Jimmy Nelson set off on a quest to visit and photograph 31 of the world’s unique tribes. He became enamored with learning about cultures so unlike his own — cultures he fears will soon die out — with traditions, rituals, and customs he believes all the world should know.

"I wanted to witness their time-honoured traditions, join in their rituals and discover how the rest of the world is threatening to change their way of life forever," he says in a mission statement for his project, Before They Pass Away. “Most importantly, I wanted to create an ambitious aesthetic photographic document that would stand the test of time. A body of work that would be an irreplaceable ethnographic record of a fast disappearing world.”

“Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don’t know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress.”