Photographer, traveler, and seeker, Turnauer has been fascinated by people since her early childhood, by their diversity and uniqueness. She has been traveling the world with her camera for over thirty years to meet people from all walks of life: mountain farmers in Austria, geishas in Japan, rabbis in Jerusalem, religious individuals in India, Greece, and Turkey, pygmies in Central Africa, and nomads in Mongolia. During her time in Canada she built herself a studio in the form of a tent that she could transport herself, and she traveled for two years from northern Alberta to southern Montana to various Native American powwows, in order to photograph traditional dancers. Individuals are always photographed in daylight and in front of a neutral background. Each one of her black-and-white portraits conveys a unique moment of an authentic encounter: “What I hope for is to capture the inner presence of the person in front of me, not just a simple representation.”We are pleased to be able to offer you two of Christine Turnauer’s striking portraits taken in 2013 in Mongolia as Edition Hatje Cantz. These are “faces that are linked to an archaic past and lives lived nearly unchanged for thousands of years”; they are “faces with features and expressions that will soon no longer exist.” The carbon pigment inkjet prints on hand-made paper are available individually or as a set and come in a folder together with a copy of the publication Presence.
