TITLE: Mentawai

The Mentawai are indigenous people who mainly live into the jungle of the Indonesian island of Siberut.
During the years of the Sukarno government, the Mentawai suffered strong pressure to leave the jungle, their traditions and their way of life to move to modern villages and still today this ethnic minority is not protected.
The Mentawai live in long wooden houses called "Uma", in peace and in harmony with the Nature of the jungle, which offers them everything they need. They are animists and their religion "Arat sabulungan", which literally means "religion of the leaves", has been practiced for centuries to regulate the relationship between human beings and the spirits of Nature.
The Sikerei are the Mentawai shamans, keepers of their traditions. They are trained by a master who teaches them how to use plants and animals to produce medicine and cure the sick. They do not perform rituals or prayers, but celebrate marriages and the inauguration of new Uma. They have tattooes on their body to protect themselves from the spirits of the forest
Having had the opportunity to share a period in close contact with the Mentawais was an extraordinary experience: living in symbiosis with nature you have the perception of experiencing something unique and precious.

AUTHOR: Jacopo Maria Della Valle (Italy)

I was born in Rome in 1979 and I was passionate about photography and reportage from an early age. I started shooting during my second grade with the Fujica ST701 belonging to my father, who liked films and trasmitted this love to me.

I graduated in Scenography at the Accademia delle Belli Arti with honors and I developed a great passion for travel photography. I traveled throughout Europe, in the United States, Cuba and Morocco before starting my reportages along Asia: I went to Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, China and India. Fascinated by Asian culture and guided by the readings of Tiziano Terzani, I always tried to get in touch with the local populations to know - and experience - their characteristic uses, customs and traditions, avoiding the superficiality of the tourist traps. For this reason I embarked on long journeys to discover different Asian ethnic minorities, who live in tribes that are difficult to reach and that still survive globalization.

Among all pictures I prefer the portraits, because they give me the chance to capture the history and the deeper essence of the people in front of me. There are people with whom I shared a lot and others with whom there was only a brief meeting, but in all situations I used the camera to make a connection with the other and to try to represent the soul through a poem of colors. In fact, it’s the camera that I often use to communicate with people so distant from us, who do not speak our own language but are so rich in curiosity and emotions.
Through my photos I would like to share with you my passion and the intensity of my experiences, which do not only testify the different anthropological realities, but they want to pay a great tribute to the different cultures that surround and enrich us.