An elderly man wearing traditional attire with a feathered headdress sits on a wooden bench inside a dimly lit wooden hut. A blurred child in red walks past in the foreground.
Close-up of an elderly person with detailed wrinkles, wearing traditional jewelry and headgear, inside a rustic wooden structure.
Close-up portrait of a Konyak elder with facial tattoos, holding a red-wrapped spear handle beside his face and looking directly at the camera.
A shirtless Konyak elder wearing a feathered headdress and arm bands, seated on a wooden bench inside a wooden house.
Five Konyak men in traditional dress, feathered and horned headdresses, and beaded necklaces standing and sitting on a hillside overlooking the mountains.
A cat sits on a wooden windowsill inside a dimly lit wooden house, backlit by sunlight through the window.
Close-up of a tattooed Konyak man's chest, wearing a necklace of brass bells, bone ornaments and red tassels.
A mithun skull with long curved horns tied to a wooden post inside a hut, with more skulls visible in the dark background.
Rows of mithun skulls with horns mounted on a woven bamboo wall inside a Konyak house.

Konyaks

December 2024 · Mon district, Nagaland

The tattoos on these faces belong to a practice that ended almost sixty years ago. The men who carry them are among the last generation to bear these marks.

I spent time in Mon district photographing in homes and on verandas, mostly waiting for indoor light to do what the tattoos already do: hold a record of another time. There wasn’t much ceremony left to photograph. What’s left are the elders themselves, the mithun skulls kept from feasts long past, and villages going on with their ordinary lives around them.

When they go, the tattoos go with them.