Stick Figures: Crossing Cultures

For thousands of years the practice of walking on stilts has been part of mankind's folklore, religious rituals, customs, and even agricultural practices. Stilt walking exists in nearly every culture on the planet where trees grow. Sadly, many of these rich traditions are in danger of disappearing as people move away from villages and into urban areas.

Why man first decided to create and walk on stilts is unknown. Certainly in many cultures they served practical needs, such as surveying corn crops from above. But the human desire to reach greater heights and to communicate with the gods also endowed this ritual with complex and resonant meaning and religious importance in many cultures.

Stick Figures is a captivating photo-documentary project exploring cultures using stilts. Photographer Jeffrey Braverman's investigation of and adventure with stilts began in 1996 when he came across a stilts dancer while she was performing on a hilltop above the Pacific Ocean. Braverman was instantly fascinated by the beauty and power of a figure on two sticks. Compelled to learn more, he traveled within the United States and to Belgium, France, Puerto Rico, Spain, Ecuador and beyond. Braverman's eloquent chronicling illuminates the rituals surrounding this universal practice that belongs to many unique and diverse cultural traditions around the globe. 

Jeffrey Braverman

Jeffrey Braverman specializes in editorial portraiture and advertising photography. His camera has taken him world-wide photographing people small and tall. His work has been exhibited in San Francisco, Napa Valley, Seattle and Quito, Ecuador and he is the recipient of numerous grants and awards.

Braverman was co-founder of STICKS AND BONES, Seattle, WA, an arts organization dedicated to archiving imagery of ritual dance. He has worked as an editorial photographer for numerous publications including Newsweek, Esquire, Time, Dwell, Big, Forbes Asia, Wired, Der Spiegel and San Francisco magazines. His advertising clients include Abbott Laboratories, Blue Cross, Levi's, Intuit, Microsoft, J. Walter Thompson, Copacino and Young and Rubican. He is presently the photography editor for Red Herring magazine in Belmont, California.

Prior to his own full-time practice Braverman taught photography in the Visual Communications Art Department at Universidad San Francisco De Quito, Quito, Ecuador and for Art Smart at Mission High School in San Francisco.

Braverman holds a BA with honors in photography from Pratt Institute's School of Art and Design.  

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