A GLOBAL TOUCH

When Annette den Ouden left in 1990 for her first photographic trip around the world, she travelled light in order to more easily make contact with ‘normal’ people. These ‘normal’ people however don’t seem to exist. On her many journeys Den Ouden primarily met extraordinary natives, people of integrity who welcomed her warmly in their own small worlds. These natives are generally not aware of the increased pace of modernisation and globalisation that will probably swallow up their age-old culture and identity. Rather than learning from what the colonial past brought about, today ancient peoples are still disappearing as a result of land reclamation, in the name of God or progress, or simply as a result of our curiosity – because an important cause of death among native peoples is disease, for instance the flu, brought in by Westerners. Here Den Ouden shows a selection from her photo series A GLOBAL TOUCH, a fleeting contact made with various population groups in South America and an encounter with several of the pure cultures that the earth is still blessed with.