Hold on to the things that you are

John Stanmeyer, an award-winning photographer, published a new book of photos about Balinese culture, called "Island of the Spirits." He was interviewed by The New York Times about the endeavour. Photos and the full interview are available here. In the Q&A, he expresses some very heartfelt and meaningful thoughts about cultural preservation and why it matters.

"This is a book, in many ways, for the Balinese. The Balinese culture is under severe stress from development and modernity. How much longer will the Balinese even be speaking their own language? How much longer will people be able to read the ancient Sanskrit texts?

I’m intense and passionate about it because I do feel in some regards, around the world, we’re having cultural genocide. Cultures are vanishing. We’re homogenizing ourselves across the planet. We have language loss on an epic level and we have cultural loss on an equally epic level. And that I find to be tragic, especially when you have rich, ancient cultures that haven’t changed for so long but now are on the verge of a breaking point.

It’s not a Western innovation anymore. Look at development in Asia. The biggest number of tourists coming to Bali right now are Chinese and Japanese. We should have the freedom to intermingle and experience the brilliance of life, wherever it may be. But what’s happening is that a lot of traditions that have taken millenniums to build and evolve are now becoming tragically dismantled.

Boy, when you look at this book and Balinese society, you don’t want this to be lost. It’s very much a reminder to the Balinese to hold on to what they have. And it’s a reminder to all cultures on earth to hold on to what you have. Don’t fall victim to the Nike shirt, to blue jeans. Hold on to the things that are you, because sooner or later the next generation isn’t going to know it and we’ll forget it and it will be lost.