AKIPRESS.COM - Though Wi-Fi connection can be found across most of the globe today, there are still groups of us who live unfettered by the glowing and glittery accoutrement of consumer society, and closer to the traditions passed down across centuries of humankind. These traditions are in a state of constant decline, as more members of the next generation leave them behind to become relics of history, Santa Maria Sun reports.

To find some of the people who still live this way, it helps to know where to look, explained photographer Richard Lindekens, whose show Traditions on the Edge currently hangs at the Elverhoj Museum in Solvang (California). The exhibit includes photographs of people Lindekens met and stayed with in Mongolia and Myanmar, whose way of life and traditions are increasingly rare.

“It started off as an artistic show, and then it changed. It’s complex and turned into a story about what I do in the developing world, and the idea is to photograph these people that are losing their identities,” Lindekens said. “... It’s like everybody wants to be the same, so it’s tough for these people to hang on to their traditional way of life.”

To gain the trust and permission of local families, communities, and governments in each country wasn’t an easy matter for Lindekens. It took several visits across a few years, several care packages, letters, and calls to arrange the trips to both countries that would yield the images in Traditions on the Edge, Lindekens explained.

Thanks to a connection made through an American teacher he met in Mongolia, Lindekens was invited to stay among some of the indigenous Mongolians famous for their traditions of high-altitude living, horse mastery, and their trained golden eagles used for hunting. Lindekens was able to attend the annual eagle hunting festival in Bayan-Ulgii in Western Mongolia, where he photographed generations of eagle hunters showcasing the skill.

Lindekens’ interest in Myanmar (Burma) is long held. He spent time in the northwest part of Myanmar, near the Chin State, where the British Empire was established during the war.

“Burma is a very interesting country; it’s as colorful as you can imagine,” he said. “And what intrigued me was, nobody in the Western world has been allowed to go there since the 1950s, because there has been a junta and we have not, for the most part, recognized them until just recently, but it is opening up now.”

He traveled up the Le Mro River in Burma with a fellow photographer and two bilingual locals, who took him to their village, Than Taung, where Lindekens was able to photograph the villagers. A number of elderly women there still reflected an aged tradition on their faces: spiderweb-like tattoos. They also made sure to dress to the nines for the visiting photographer, he explained.

“The faces talk, their eyes talk,” he said. “I love that, because I didn’t realize how much a photo could tell until I started focusing on people and their faces.”

Photo courtesy of Richard Lindekens