Bruno Manser Fonds releases over 10,000 photos by environmentalist hero Bruno Manser On April 19th over 10,000 of Bruno Manser's photographs will be made available to the public on-line. The pictures are rare documentation of the nomadic Penan peoples from the Malaysian state of Sarawak in Borneo. Swiss environmentalist Bruno Manser proved an unflinching and passionate advocate for the Penans in the 1990s as their territory was increasingly deforested by industrial logging companies.
Lukas Straumann, Director of the Bruno Manser Fonds, believes the photos to be an important legacy for Bruno Manser work. "They document the culture of South East Asia's last hunter-gatherers in a crucial moment when their culture came under pressure through large-scale systematic destruction of their ecosystem," Starumann told Mongabay.com, adding that "apart from their socio-cultural value, the pictures could also become important evidence in land rights litigations for Penan communities who struggle to have their land rights legally recognized by the courts."
The non-profit organization, Bruno Manser Fonds, based in Basel, Switzerland, has spent three years preserving, digitalizing, and inventorying Manser's massive collection of photographs. The photographs will be available through the Bruno Manser Fonds website:
Jeremy Hance