For his portrait series The People of the Forest, award-winning photographer Mark Edward Harris chose to focus on orangutans. While the future for many species is uncertain, orangutans in the wild are hanging on by a particularly thin vine. Long before genetic testing revealed an almost 97 percent DNA overlap between orangutans and humans, the similarities between the two species was noticed. “Orangutan” comes from the Malay and Indonesian words orang (people) and hutan (forest).
Harris first self-published the photo book The People of the Forest in 2020. Now, the project has evolved to include this new exhibition with the aim of, in addition to entertaining the audience, raising awareness about the urgency of protecting endangered species like orangutans and conserving their natural habitats.
Organized into two sections, The Portraits and Into the Wild, the exhibition features 57 of the magnetic photographs Harris produced for the series over the past decade in locations around the world such as the Center for Great Apes Sanctuary in the USA, the Singapore Zoo, the Tama Zoo in Japan, The Kharkiv Zoo in Ukraine, and the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation sites in Indonesia, the largest orangutan conservation program in the world.
Mark Edward Harris graduated from California State University, Los Angeles with a Master of Arts Degree in Pictorial/Documentary History. His work has appeared in various publications including Vanity Fair, LIFE, National Geographic Travel, Time, Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar and The New York Times. His book, The People of the Forest, received 1st place in the nature book category at the International Photography Awards. Harris’s photographs are included in the collections of the Los Angeles Museum of Art, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the Shanghai National Library, the George Eastman Museum and the Sir Elton John Collection.
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