ABOVE: A Wayapi man using
Harrer’s camera during a
boat trip in French Guiana.
Photo © Heinrich Harrer, 1969, HHM.
BELOW: Harrer (at left) and
former King Léopold III of
Belgium and two Wayapi
companions on the Oyapock
River in French Guiana,
1969.
© HHM.
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BELOW:
Feather headdress,
olok. Wayana, southern
Suriname.
Collected by Harrer in 1966.
Photo © Kathrin Leuenberger,
2018.
TOP: Combs.
Marron, Suriname.
Collected by Harrer in 1966.
Photo © Kathrin Leuenberger, 2018.
ABOVE: Installation view of
the Harrer Suriname material.
Photo © Maike Powroznik, 2018.
ART OF SURINAME
Zurich —Heinrich Harrer is mainly
known for his mountain-climbing skills,
but he was passionate about travel in
general and visited New Guinea, Brazil,
Suriname, and Asia. He was a collector
as well as an explorer, and he amassed nearly 1,500 diverse
objects that are lively testimonies to the lifeways of
the people as well as to the life of the man who acquired
them. Harrer was meticulous and each of his pieces was
documented, photographed, recorded in a journal, and
sometimes even appeared in a short fi lm.
The Völkerkundemuseum of the Universität Zürich,
which now holds Harrer’s collection, is showing works
from Suriname that he acquired in 1966 in Saamaka,
then an isolated and remote part of country. They cast
light on the daily lives of the people that created them as
well as on the fascinating history of the region.