The Konyak Naga
The Konyak people - also known as the Konyak Naga - are a Tibeto-Burmese major Naga ethnic group, mainly located in the Northeast Indian state of Nagaland. The rich history with its unique traditions of around two million people and, very importantly, its tribes were our main motivation for this photography trip.
Equipped with all we needed for a professional photography project, we reached our first destination, Longwa. Longwa is the biggest Konyak village and spans across two countries, both India and Myanmar. The people living there hold even dual citizenship. Apham, our local point of contact, led us to the house of the headhunters, known as the Naomei Warriors.
We got the chance to get introduced to their unique culture. One tradition is a sort of initiation for men when they are in the age of 18 to 20. The queen of the village would tattoo the face and chest of the man using a needle made from a palm tree. As the warrior gets older and more experienced in fighting and hunting, more tattoos are added. Another striking tradition is the brass heads that the men wear on a necklace: we learnt that each brass head is the symbol for a killed person. Nowadays, many of the headhunters feel guilty of their past, especially due to the spread of Christianity. However, they continue to acknowledge and respect their past.
After getting the people to know better, we started with the portraits. We had to work fast since we had only one day with the elders. The broncolor Siros 800 L proved to be perfect for this job – it was handy enough to quickly move around but still had full 800 joules of flash power.
We started the series of pictures with a man who had four heads on an elegantly beaded necklace around his neck. The necklaces today serve solely a cultural purpose, they explained.
Bajun - a tall and proud 82 years old man - was one of the persons to photograph. His tattoos are already fading but the rest of his traditional attire looked as good as new. He was wearing a cone-shaped hat made of bones and feathers, held a traditional hunting spear, and, of course, his head necklace. All the warriors have widened ear lobes in which they wear goat horns as earrings. A generally accepted belief is that the name ‘Nagaland’ has its origins in the Burmese word for ‘people with earrings’. Less traditional – and therefor so interesting to capture – was their remaining apparel: Bajun was wearing slightly oversized Adidas sweatpants, another man by the fire black Nike shorts. The combination of traditional ornaments and modern apparel made them to truly stylish men.
For the environmental portraits we used a simple setup with a black backdrop. Although we shot outside, we had perfect studio-like photography conditions. The power of the flash was strong enough to overpower the daylight and the broncolor Octabox 75 provided the desired homogenous light.
