Sami exhibit opens in Philadelphia

Photographer Erika Larsen introduces the day-to-day lives of modern Sami families through her acclaimed photography exhibition: Sami - Walking with Reindeer.  

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  Among Buocot, 2009 / From the exhibition The People That Walk With Reindeer. Photography: Erika Larsen

• As part of a four-year project with National Geographic, Erika worked as a beaga (housekeeper) among a northern Sami reindeer-herding family. While living and working with them, Erika photographed reindeer and reindeer herders in both Norway and Sweden. From her intimate vantage point, Erika immersed herself in the culture, language, and land of the northern Sami. Her work gives an intimate peek into the beautiful and bloody realities of reindeer herding but also illuminates Sami connections with their past, their environment and each other. These tender images show quieter moments of life in the far north: a child with his dog, a Sami tent (laavu) alone before the Northern Lights, and a baby nestled in a wooden cradle.

• Erika sees her Sami family as teachers, and hopes her photos show a better understand of our role as stewards of the earth. “It is inevitable when spending time in a more nature-based culture that one must recognize the cycles of life and death and therefore begin to evaluate man's role within this circle." The exhibit open April 14 and continues though August 26 at the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia, 215.389.1776.
  For more info, see www.americanswedish.org/exhibitions/sami-walking-reindeer