Bruno Manser's Penan & Rainforest Photos Go Online

Bruno Manser's Penan Photos Go Online

Unique documentation of the last nomadic rainforest peoples of Southeast Asia

Since 19 April 2008, 1000 of Bruno Manser's rainforest photographs are available to the public on Internet. The pictures taken by the environmentalist whose attention was focused on protecting the primeval forests uniquely document the threatened rainforest culture of the Penan in the Malaysian state of Sarawak and his long-standing battle to prevent the deforestation of these rainforests.

A project team from the Bruno Manser Fonds has worked for three years to professionally preserve, digitalise and compile an inventory (in three languages, English / French, German) of more than 10,000 photographs from Manser's estate. The pictures are one of the world's most important sources for the culture of the Penan, one of the last nomadic rainforest peoples on earth. Of some 10,000 Penan, less than 200 are still living as nomads today. The dramatic and progressive logging of the rainforest has forced most of them to become settled.

Bruno Manser (1954-2000) lived with a group of Penan in Borneo from 1984 until 1990 and described much of what he experienced in his Tagebücher aus dem Regenwald [Diaries from the Rainforest]. He never returned from his last trip to Sarawak and was declared as officially missing and presumed dead in 2005. During his lifetime he was considered as the most credible protagonist for the preservation of the rainforest.

The launching of the photo archive was accompanied by an official ceremony in which family members and friends of Manser, the Swiss author Franz Hohler, and a representative of the Basel municipal government participated.

Link to Bruno Manser's pictures:

www.brunomanser.org/en/pictures

For more information, please contact:

Bruno Manser Fonds
Heuberg 25
4051 Basel
www.bmf.ch

ENDS

Latest World News | Top World News | World Digest | Archives | RSS

© Scoop Media