Trapper (16 x 24") (Print 1 of 7)

Location: Ituri Rainforest, Congo (D.R.C.).

Year: 2015

Size: 16 x 24” Image Size.

Limited Edition: Print 1 in an Edition of 7 (Plus 2 Artist Proofs). Signed, dated and numbered.

Paper: Museum-Quality Archival Pigment Print.

Includes: Artist Stamped Certificate of Authenticity.

Details: 

Here. In the Ituri rainforest — where light falls in thin green ribbons and the forest seems to inhale and exhale around you — I briefly met a young Mbuti trapper. He moved upright through the low-hanging jungle with a grace that made my six-foot body feel like an intrusion; his footsteps seemed to belong to the forest itself, tuned to it’s pulse.

The jungle follows its own logic. Each year, vines are woven into bridges strong enough to carry entire communities, while footpaths appear and vanish with the seasons. Sound travels differently here — held in the canopy before descending in soft echoes. The Mbuti call themselves “forest people” not as metaphor, but as lineage going back hundreds of thousands of years.

I remember the stillness of this moment — the way he held my gaze, unblinking, framed by dried fronds like a doorway the forest had opened for him alone. His painted eyes, the net resting on his shoulder, the tied leaves — all of it carried a quiet sovereignty. A reminder that some knowledge is inherited not through words but through movement: how to hunt without waste, move without sound, belong without asking.

In Congo, Indigenous belonging is often stolen — by war, displacement, and the slow erosion of land and rights. Outside the forest, the Mbuti are treated as ghosts in their own country. Inside it, they are its oldest translators, speaking the language of nature.

Watching him stand there, I felt something Congo had been teaching me for years: that dignity can survive pressures that would break most of us, and that identity rooted in place is not easily uprooted.

He said nothing as I photographed him. He didn’t need to. The forest answered for him.

Mbuti trapper. From the series Forest People.