Once innocence is lost, it is gone forever. When photographer Chris Rainier recognized that Western society was creeping into the lives of New Guinea’s mysterious tribal cultures, he set out to document the legacy of a people still largely untouched by modern society. The island is home to more than 1,000 aboriginal tribes, which are vanishing before our eyes. Rainier’s collection of 40 black-and-white photographs, “Where Masks Still Dance,” captures the lives, ceremonies, rites of passage, battles and grief of an ancient people rarely seen on our side of the world. View the pictures at Bowers Museum before they, too, withdraw forever.
Saturdays, Sundays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Tuesdays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Starts: Dec. 26. Continues through June 6, 2009
