Pictures of the Day: Egypt and Elsewhere

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Photos from Egypt, Hong Kong, Arizona and South Africa.

Follow Lens on Facebook and Twitter.

The Public Editor’s Sunday Column: Who Sets the Terms for Interviews?

Some Times readers wonder whether reporters are giving news subjects too much control.

Preserving the Voice of Vanishing Cultures

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Chris Rainier has spent three decades photographing ancient cultures, often in places that cartographers have labeled uncharted, among “peoples from the past who were living in the present.” As he has repeatedly returned to New Guinea, South America and Africa, he as witnessed an onslaught of global American culture and technology erode the remnants of those cultures. Time is running short to preserve knowledge that he believes is important for all of humankind.

Mr. Rainier has dedicated himself to helping save the intellectual and linguistic diversity of endangered societies through the National Geographic Enduring Voices Project. He has also used technology to help create opportunities for people who are not technologically connected to tell their narratives in his Last Mile Technology Program.

“We consider biological diversity of these different flora and fauna crucial to our survival, but don’t think about intellectual diversity â€" in fact, we kind of look at it in a global market level, wouldn’t it be great to have one language?” said Mr. Ranier, 55. “Well, if all we’re doing is communicating abou! t commerce, perfect. But what about diversity that comes up in a language. Each language has its own unique way of looking at things.”

Like Edward Curtis, who photographed American Indians, Mr. Rainier has helped preserve tribal languages and rituals in remote areas. Mr. Curtis is sometimes maligned for portraying his subjects as noble savages and for staging images, but his work has allowed some American Indian tribes to reclaim their language, customs and rituals.

Chris Rainier/National Geographic Butterfly mask, Boni tribe. Houndi, Burkina Faso.

Mr. Rainier undertook a documentation of more than 50 tribes that inhabit both sides of the island of New Guinea. ome groups he lived with, he said, had never been photographed, and one had never seen a white man before. He hopes that as cultures change rapidly, his photos might be a resource for future tribe members.

While Mr. Rainier has devoted his life to preserving vanishing cultures, he has no illusions about his role as an outsider. In the introduction to his most recent book “Cultures on the Edge,” published by National Geographic, he wrote:

I have come to realize that the further I evolve as a photographer, regardless of where I point my camera, I am taking a self-portrait â€" a reflection of my own story, my own beliefs, my own point of view. Nothing more. Nor do I presume that where I point my camera and take a picture is a reflection of the absolute truth. There is no such thing as an absolute truth. All images merely reflect the emotion of the pho! tographer! and the opinion of the reviewer. As it is stated in photography, there always exists two individuals in every image, the artist and the observer, and their sets of beliefs and cultural biases.

Mr. Rainier has spent years digging deep into ancient societies, and he is neither a tourist nor a parachute photojournalist. Yet he has become acutely aware that as a white man photographing other cultures he is capable of telling stories only from his point of view. This realization has led him to encourage and empower indigenous people to tell their stories.

“What would happen if you gave a camera to the Afghani girl in Steve McCurry’s iconic photo?” he asked. “How different would those photographs be? Not to replace the Steve McCurrys, but rather to create another chair at the table of the dialogue of what it means to be human. It’s not an either/or. It’s not a good or a bad. It just simply is.There are voices ot there that have incredible vision, and we aren’t accessing them enough.”

Working with like-minded photographers, Mr. Rainier started the All Roads Photography Program for National Geographic. It was dedicated to mentoring photographers from countries outside the United States and Western Europe. Though it lasted only eight years before National Geographic stopped financing it, All Roads influenced other programs to support underrepresented photographers around the world. Mr. Rainier and the advisory board of All Roads have since founded Global Voices to further the same work.

Mr. Rainier continues to work on assisting indigenous peoples in creating different visual narratives. He traveled to Burkina Faso in West Africa several times in the 1990s to document tribes in remote areas that were living much like their ancestors did centuries before. When he returned in 2011, so much had changed that he could barely recognize the places he had been.

Chris Rainier/National Geographic Shaman. Mongolia.

One day, he drove 50 miles off the road to a village that was holding a traditional festival. Unlike 15 years earlier, there were cellphone towers everywhere, Mr. Rainier said, and everybody younger than 30 was “in rapper clothes, taking smartphone photographs of the white guy photographing” their elders in traditional dress.

“In a Western framework, we look at that and go, ‘Oh my God, what are we doing to the rest of the world,’ but I think that’s a form of colonialism, even with the presumption that we’re the ones that decide” Mr. Rainier said. “First of all, we’re in the minority, and the vast majority of the developing world is up and running. There’s huge amounts of people coming online, and cellular is taking over from the Intenet.”

He started the Last Mile Technology Program to bring Internet and cellular technology and skills to isolated communities so they could tell their own stories and create awareness of the problems in their daily lives through photography, video and social media. So far, they have trained indigenous people in Botswana, Nepal, New Guinea, Paraguay and Peru.

It might seem counterintuitive that a man who has spent decades trying to help document and preserve remote societies before they were destroyed by development and Western culture now believes that the Internet could help people in isolated areas control their lives and preserve the integrity of their culture as they adapt to the 21st century. But Mr. Rainier believes that the Internet might be the last chance for vanishing cultures to survive by promoting communal businesses or communicating about development issues that are changing the environment that they rely on.

“There’s so many cultures that are still now not conn! ected and! are getting left behind in the digital divide,” he said. “More and more, this is a world where you don’t exist unless you’re online, and you don’t have access to information to education to empowerment, to women’s issues, to job opportunities, unless you’re connected.”

Chris Rainier/National Geographic Bayon Temple. Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

Follow @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.

Preserving the Voice of Vanishing Cultures

In order to view this feature, you must download the latest version of flash player here.

#flashHeader{visibility:visible !important;}

Chris Rainier has spent three decades photographing ancient cultures, often in places that cartographers have labeled uncharted, among “peoples from the past who were living in the present.” As he has repeatedly returned to New Guinea, South America and Africa, he as witnessed an onslaught of global American culture and technology erode the remnants of those cultures. Time is running short to preserve knowledge that he believes is important for all of humankind.

Mr. Rainier has dedicated himself to helping save the intellectual and linguistic diversity of endangered societies through the National Geographic Enduring Voices Project. He has also used technology to help create opportunities for people who are not technologically connected to tell their narratives in his Last Mile Technology Program.

“We consider biological diversity of these different flora and fauna crucial to our survival, but don’t think about intellectual diversity â€" in fact, we kind of look at it in a global market level, wouldn’t it be great to have one language?” said Mr. Ranier, 55. “Well, if all we’re doing is communicating abou! t commerce, perfect. But what about diversity that comes up in a language. Each language has its own unique way of looking at things.”

Like Edward Curtis, who photographed American Indians, Mr. Rainier has helped preserve tribal languages and rituals in remote areas. Mr. Curtis is sometimes maligned for portraying his subjects as noble savages and for staging images, but his work has allowed some American Indian tribes to reclaim their language, customs and rituals.

Chris Rainier/National Geographic Butterfly mask, Boni tribe. Houndi, Burkina Faso.

Mr. Rainier undertook a documentation of more than 50 tribes that inhabit both sides of the island of New Guinea. ome groups he lived with, he said, had never been photographed, and one had never seen a white man before. He hopes that as cultures change rapidly, his photos might be a resource for future tribe members.

While Mr. Rainier has devoted his life to preserving vanishing cultures, he has no illusions about his role as an outsider. In the introduction to his most recent book “Cultures on the Edge,” published by National Geographic, he wrote:

I have come to realize that the further I evolve as a photographer, regardless of where I point my camera, I am taking a self-portrait â€" a reflection of my own story, my own beliefs, my own point of view. Nothing more. Nor do I presume that where I point my camera and take a picture is a reflection of the absolute truth. There is no such thing as an absolute truth. All images merely reflect the emotion of the pho! tographer! and the opinion of the reviewer. As it is stated in photography, there always exists two individuals in every image, the artist and the observer, and their sets of beliefs and cultural biases.

Mr. Rainier has spent years digging deep into ancient societies, and he is neither a tourist nor a parachute photojournalist. Yet he has become acutely aware that as a white man photographing other cultures he is capable of telling stories only from his point of view. This realization has led him to encourage and empower indigenous people to tell their stories.

“What would happen if you gave a camera to the Afghani girl in Steve McCurry’s iconic photo?” he asked. “How different would those photographs be? Not to replace the Steve McCurrys, but rather to create another chair at the table of the dialogue of what it means to be human. It’s not an either/or. It’s not a good or a bad. It just simply is.There are voices ot there that have incredible vision, and we aren’t accessing them enough.”

Working with like-minded photographers, Mr. Rainier started the All Roads Photography Program for National Geographic. It was dedicated to mentoring photographers from countries outside the United States and Western Europe. Though it lasted only eight years before National Geographic stopped financing it, All Roads influenced other programs to support underrepresented photographers around the world. Mr. Rainier and the advisory board of All Roads have since founded Global Voices to further the same work.

Mr. Rainier continues to work on assisting indigenous peoples in creating different visual narratives. He traveled to Burkina Faso in West Africa several times in the 1990s to document tribes in remote areas that were living much like their ancestors did centuries before. When he returned in 2011, so much had changed that he could barely recognize the places he had been.

Chris Rainier/National Geographic Shaman. Mongolia.

One day, he drove 50 miles off the road to a village that was holding a traditional festival. Unlike 15 years earlier, there were cellphone towers everywhere, Mr. Rainier said, and everybody younger than 30 was “in rapper clothes, taking smartphone photographs of the white guy photographing” their elders in traditional dress.

“In a Western framework, we look at that and go, ‘Oh my God, what are we doing to the rest of the world,’ but I think that’s a form of colonialism, even with the presumption that we’re the ones that decide” Mr. Rainier said. “First of all, we’re in the minority, and the vast majority of the developing world is up and running. There’s huge amounts of people coming online, and cellular is taking over from the Intenet.”

He started the Last Mile Technology Program to bring Internet and cellular technology and skills to isolated communities so they could tell their own stories and create awareness of the problems in their daily lives through photography, video and social media. So far, they have trained indigenous people in Botswana, Nepal, New Guinea, Paraguay and Peru.

It might seem counterintuitive that a man who has spent decades trying to help document and preserve remote societies before they were destroyed by development and Western culture now believes that the Internet could help people in isolated areas control their lives and preserve the integrity of their culture as they adapt to the 21st century. But Mr. Rainier believes that the Internet might be the last chance for vanishing cultures to survive by promoting communal businesses or communicating about development issues that are changing the environment that they rely on.

“There’s so many cultures that are still now not conn! ected and! are getting left behind in the digital divide,” he said. “More and more, this is a world where you don’t exist unless you’re online, and you don’t have access to information to education to empowerment, to women’s issues, to job opportunities, unless you’re connected.”

Chris Rainier/National Geographic Bayon Temple. Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

Follow @JamesEstrin and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.