Bradford Johnson

The Conversions paintings grew out of a series of documentary photographs taken by five Protestant Evangelical missionaries slain in the jungles of Ecuador in 1957. These missionaries attempted to contact a small, hostile and isolated tribe known as the Aucas (Huaorani). News of the men’s disappearance, and the subsequent discovery of their speared bodies became a media sensation in the United States. Along with personal effects recovered at the site of their deaths, a number of cameras (both still and motion picture) were found. These produced haunting images of the three days the men spent anticipating contact with the Aucas and an initially peaceful encounter with three members of its tribe. However, the visual scope of this project ranges well beyond these photographs. Additional visual sources contrast the missionaries’ focused evangelical objective with complex political, religious and sociological histories of the Amazon and post war America. Images culled from 1950’s newsprint and copy advertisements, the Amazon field journals of Henry Water Bates, the South American paintings of Martin Johnston Heade, Sebas’ Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, 1724-1765 and etchings from the Spanish Conquest are prisms that cast a vivid spectrum of Amazonian history and American culture.