Mountain Crossroads

During the early 1970s, when the photographs of ceremonial life in this book were taken, the people of the Cordillera mountains of Northern Luzon had arrived at a crossroads in their history. In this remote and rugged region of agricultural villages, the traditional way of life and the path to modernity were converging. The road forward was uncertain. The photographs in this book document rituals and ceremonies that primarily followed past practice, but that already reflected changing values and beliefs.

Most of these images are of events in and around the Municipality of Sadanga, in Mountain Province, where the author was a guest for eighteen months from 1971-73. A few of the photos were taken in nearby villages. At the time, Sadanga and its neighboring barrios were some of the most traditional villages in the entire region, but even here, the forces of change were already at work with regard to livelihood, education, dress, family life and religion. The ritual highlight during this period in Sadanga was an elaborate, month-long series of gatherings, prayers, animal sacrifices, feasts, gong-playing and dancing, hosted by more than thirty married couples in celebration and commemoration of their unions.

The photographs in this book were originally taken on color transparency, color negative and black-and-white negative film. In 2018, they were scanned to create a digital archive. The majority of the portraits contained in this archive are reproduced here with little or no editing or modification. Captions for these images present a brief description, the time and place of the photograph and an archive index number. Most of the descriptions include the names of the individuals being photographed.