Yuzo Morita’s 1979 photographs offer a rare glimpse into Nagaland’s traditional life, culture, landscapes and community practices
KOHIMA — Nearly five decades after Japanese ethnographic photographer Yuzo Morito travelled extensively across Nagaland, his photographic record of the state in 1979 is being revisited through a four-day exhibition in Kohima.
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Titled “Time Travel to Nagaland 1979 — A Japanese Photographer’s Record of Life and Tradition”, the exhibition was inaugurated on Wednesday at the Directorate of Art and Culture. It has been jointly organised by the National Museum of Ethnology (NMoE), Osaka, Japan, and the Nagaland State Museum under the department of Art and Culture.
Morito, an ethnographic photographer, travel writer and ethnologist, travelled through Nagaland in 1979, documenting people, landscapes, rituals, traditions and everyday life through his photographs.
The exhibition draws from that collection and offers a glimpse of Nagaland at a time when many aspects of community life and cultural practices were being documented through the lens of an outsider.
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Emi Okada, project director and ethnomusicologist with NMoE, said the museum has digitised about 4,000 photographs taken by Morito in Nagaland and created a new digital archive.
Okada, who first visited Nagaland in 2012, said she was impressed by the state’s culture and that the museum had been researching Naga artworks in its collection while preparing a database to make the information more widely accessible.
She added that the exhibition provides an opportunity to look back at the rich cultural life of Nagaland in 1979 while also reflecting on how many of those traditions continue to be cherished today.
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Adela Moa, Director of Art and Culture, said the exhibition was an initiative to connect the past with the present while strengthening cultural and academic relations between Japan and Nagaland.
She said the collaboration would contribute to the documentation, preservation, research and transmission of Naga cultural heritage.
K Konngam Konyak, Advisor for Art and Culture and Treasuries and Accounts, said the exhibition was significant as it allows people to look back at Nagaland through Morito’s photographs.
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He said the images captured Naga people, traditions, everyday life, landscapes and other aspects of cultural life more than four decades ago, describing them not simply as old photographs but as records of cultural memory.
During the programme, Konyak also launched two digital databases: the Database of Naga Collection at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, and the Digital Archives of Morito’s Photography Collection.
The exhibition is also accompanied by lectures covering the musical and social dimensions of traditional polyphony, the Chokri Li indigenous knowledge system, and cultural transmission through the preservation of material culture.
The Japanese project team includes Hitoshi Endo, project member and archaeologist, and Mitsuko Watanabe, project member and geographer, along with Okada.
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