(from 2007 to 2026)
600 portraits from all over the world, all taken at the same distance.
I am interested in the evolution of man, anthropology and multidisciplinary sciences that care about relationships, such as human geography, which studies the distribution of man on Earth, how and why he moves and what social and environmental impact he has on the territory.
Over the years I have accumulated many questions about contemporary man - how and where did power, hatred, racism and war arise? When and why did inequality arise? Have we evolved too much? Are we still compatible with Earth? Are states still indispensable as we have thought of them until now? What is the way to live peacefully together on one world? - To try to answer these and other questions, I decided, about 15 years ago, to retrace the most important evolutionary stages of man backwards. To make this journey, I followed as an itinerary the four divisions of human societies that the anthropologist Elman Service made: the bands, the Tribes, the chefferies and finally the States.
I met the first gangs in Botswana, Africa. I met a family of Bushmen, about 15 hunter-gatherers who still live as man lived 15,000 years ago. They are democratic and egalitarian families because all choices are shared within the group. When we went hunting for baboons with a bow and arrow, the men were dressed in slippers, short jeans and a skinned baboon on their backs to smell like these animals. Upon our return to the village all the food was equally divided. Everyone knows each other and there is no need to have a leader. There is no bureaucracy or some form of power. If someone tries to prevail over the other, they are immediately laughed at and put aside. There is no private property and an economy, but only fair barter.
Then I visited the Hadzabe tribes in Tanzania and the Mursi, Konso and Nyangatom tribes in Ethiopia. They are groups of hundreds of people who still live from sheep farming and agriculture. In these communities all the members still know each other in person and this facilitates peace between groups at odds with each other because there is always someone who can avoid conflict. They usually tend to be sedentary in fishing areas, pastures and cultivated areas. Decisions are still made in groups and in assemblies all men can have their say. In some tribes there is the big man, a sort of leader who can, through his charisma alone and not with a formal position of power, convince the group of his thoughts and manage to make decisions for the community. He can persuade but not command.
Then I visited Chefferie villages in the Peruvian Amazon, Arctic Canada, Greenland, South Dakota and Tahiti. The first Cheferie were formed around 7,500 years ago. They are made up of thousands of subjects. Not everyone knew each other, unlike bands and tribes, they had to elect officials to resolve conflicts. Thus was born the power entrusted to a person. From the big man, power passes to someone who has an official position recognized by all who can make decisions for others. With this new position, laws were born, which for now were unwritten.
The redistributive economy was born, the leader collects taxes through his officials, mainly food and work. These are first redistributed to warriors, priests and artisans, then another part of the tributes is redistributed to common people because the leader has the moral duty to support his people in exchange for work and offerings.
Inequality was also born in the Cheferie, no longer egalitarian societies but societies divided into pyramids where at the top we have the chief and his family and hereditary relatives, then his officials, then the common citizens and the slaves. The circle closest to the leader was rewarded with more food, leaders and larger and more comfortable houses. Even the burial was different, the leaders had decorated, large tombs, full of jewels and sacrificed animals, while the further we go down the pyramid the more we find miserable burials.
