Nagas: Hidden Hill People of India, a series of no more than thirty photos taken by the famed photographer Pablo Bartholomew, has been on view in the Rubin Museum of Art since early March.

The prints of the Nagas are displayed in a polished, taupe-colored space where shadows fall in crisscrossed angles, layering over when they meet the only two solid blocks in the room — double columns supporting sculptures molded by the Nagas people themselves. Funny, though, that the two figurines defy any conventional labeling. Though they share the primitivism of African creations, there are distinct features of wider faces, alternate seating positions and oddly barrel-shaped heads that push away such assumptions. Yet the typical South Asian form of sculpture, too — serene Buddhas in lotus positions, smiling with eternal, bronze and golden wisdom — one that would seem closer in location, still fails to exhibit any similarities with Nagas sculptures.

Indeed, in this gallery one finds a culture crafted piece-meal, bones and dark, inky tattoos and bodies melting into a distinct nation situated in Nagaland, surrounded by the aromatic tea leaves of Assam and hugged lopsidedly by the regions of Myanmar and Manipur. With more than thirty languages and a diverse sampling of local tribes, the Nagas are hard to capture (Bartholemew encountered many legal obstacles due to territorial conflicts in the region) and harder yet to define. Previously enthusiastic headhunters and practitioners of various ancient rites and rituals, the Nagas are now predominantly Christian. This particular exhibition documents the eclectic mix between tradition and innovation, chiefs and Church and the sad, large gap between the elderly and the youth as an old culture seeks to acclimate itself to a strange, changing world.

Bartholomew’s photographs, taken primarily in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, explore the Nagas lands and rites in a close, direct manner. A picture of Morning Misty Hills introduces the viewer to the region — blue-tinged fog unfurls peacefully over the fields, covering for a few precious dimly-illuminated hours the fraught dynamic within the Nagas village. Soon enough, however, the inner tension reveals itself. In An Old Warrior with his Red Blanket, an elder is enveloped in a crimson cloth that commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Mon Church. However, the warrior’s neck is adorned with ornaments that symbolize his past as a headhunter — a practice that outraged missionaries would ban as a clearly amoral activity. Shortly afterwards, frail resistance is found in the form of a respected chief standing proudly in his skull hut, a construction that would eventually be dismantled by the authorities. The conflict between Christian beliefs and the ancient, animist ceremonies of the Nagas people surfaces in these photographs, present in the faces of aged men and young schoolgirls alike.

Along with issues in the religious sector, the Nagas also face problems with habitat conservation. The very same mist that blankets the hills in one photo turns, suddenly, in a nearby picture, to dark, creeping smoke as the farmers practice jhum — a farming technique that involves burning errant vegetation for the sake of clearing land. While their fields smolder and flames lick the dry grasses, the Nagas turn to hunt wildlife, an activity facilitated by the introduction of firearms. Yet this very form of recreation causes select species of birds to grow scarcer and endangered. Hornbill feathers — prized signs of power and prestige — have now become rare and difficult to obtain. Even as jhum causes erosion of the earth, the Nagas are slowly finding their own rituals stripped of objects, as growing modernization and industry causes an erosion of the very core of Nagas tradition.

The Nagas still attempt to find a comfortable cultural, religious, ecological and national balance within the global arena. The last image in the gallery showcases three girls dressed in machine-woven clothing, using makeup and electronic appliances. Yet they remain, against that common creed of teenage rebellion, in their native Nagaland, and their fringed, dyed wardrobes are styled with a nod to their predecessors. Bartholomew recognizes their internal battle and, as a summation of both the strife and potential within the children, he titles this last photograph Nagas Youth Caught Between Two Worlds, The Modern and the Traditional — and the viewer can only hope that, with time, the Nagas will adapt to the new order.