Silent Warriors - Portraits of North American Indians

Silent Warriors

Eric Klemm is picking up the thread where Edward Curtis ended, but now, nearly one hundred years later there are no more "Great Warriors", their place taken by ordinary people who refused to give up. Because of the devastation of the North American Indian people and their culture, the mere act of surviving, no matter how desperate the personal or communal conditions, was transformed into a heroic one. Just not dying meant the chance to repopulate and give birth to a future.
"My project is to photograph three hundred portraits of men, women and children in a style that is contemporary, straight forward, and vital. Wherever I meet them, passing on the street, at a ceremony or dancing event, I am photographing them immediately - to capture that moment, just after the eyes meet, that moment while the recognition and acknowledgment of a shared humanity is still in our eyes before the guardedness of difference darkens it. Through the face of the North American Indian I am looking for a reflection of the entire human condition."
Josephine Dvorken, a Magnum photographer who looked at Klemm's photographs at a portfolio review in New York recently wrote in an E-mail: "you have captured a mysterious sadness that I never completely understood but recognize as deep truth".
Gary Michael Dault, senior art critic of The Globe & Mail, Toronto, calls Eric Klemm's photographs: "startling, forceful, dramatic yet respectful, searching, troubling, brilliantly and inescapably memorable".
The Silent Warriors series was Awarded 1st prize Portrait/Culture at PX3, Prix de la Photographie Paris, 2007, and 2dn prize Fine Art/Portrait at International Photography Awards/Lucie Awards, 2007, Los Angeles. One of Klemm's Award winning images has been selected for the 2007 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London.