One with Pachamama, a Rainbow Gathering Journey (Brazil, 2012)
Members of what is called the Rainbow Family regularly come together from all over the world. The participants seek to live in harmony with nature. They reject violence, the consumer economy, and gather only in the most beautiful natural settings. Since her earliest youth the photographer Zia Zeff had gone to these Rainbow Gatherings, as they are called, with her parents. As a photographer who is also a professional dancer, painter and bodypaint and tattoo artist, she wanted to record her fellow Rainbow-family members in a more artistic manner than merely in a documentary portrait. She asked them to have their bodies painted as the animal or plant with which they felt the most affinity – their connection with the indigenous South American divinity Pachamama, literally ‘Mother Earth’. The result is a mix of painting, documentary photography and theater.
