Photograph Exhibit: "Travels with the Maasai" by Douglas Munch

A Maasai warrior at sunrise
in the Ngorongoro Highlands.

Bernardsville Public Library is pleased to present "Travels with the Maasai" during the month of May, an exhibition of photographs by local entrepreneur and professional photographer Douglas Munch.  There will be an opening reception for the public on Saturday, May 10 from 12:00 to 2:30 pm.

The show will feature photographs from the Serengeti, including images of the ancient Hadzabe tribe, one of the last remaining hunter gatherers on earth and the Maasai people in Tanzania.  About this exhibition, Mr. Munch said, “My vision is to view the world through a prism of beauty, color, perspective, and geometry, leading to images with heart and sensitivity.  I hope this exhibition will project those qualities through my images.”  Hadzabe people number just under 2,000 today, living on the shore of Lake Eyasi.  Through DNA testing, the tribe has been traced back 2.2 million years old with origins in the Olduvai Gorge.  Maasai people are pastoral, herding goats and cattle.  As fierce warriors, the Maasai men are trained for battle.  

Mr. Munch has been creating photographic images since the age of eleven when he won his first "open" contest in as a young student in Japan.  Since that time, photography has been a creative outlet for him, primarily as a serious avocation.  He has said about his work, "I love this medium.  Our world has so much color and beauty in it.  Photography helps me to enjoy that beauty and express my vision of it through photographic images that others may also enjoy.”

Over the years, he has won numerous contests and has published photographs in books, journals, and calendars, most recently for Barnes and Nobel's 2010 mid-year and 2011 engagement calendars.  Munch has had several photographic exhibitions including a curated one man show in New Jersey, “Colors of the World,” which featured images from ten countries and five US states.  Another one man show in Toronto, Canada, “Colors of Macedonia,” featured images of antiquity and modernity in the Republic of Macedonia, part of the former Yugoslav Republic.  In 2011, he was invited to exhibit several images as part of another curated photo exhibition in New Jersey and also exhibited a number of photographs that were coordinated with a "Photoshop® Lightroom" class he taught at Calumet Photographic in Cambridge, MA.  Most recently, he has been on two different expeditions with National Geographic photographers, one in Tanzania and another in Tibet.  The Tanzania journey is the subject of this exhibition.

Mr. Munch had a long career in medicine and business consulting with pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and medical device companies.  He also worked for companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Sphinx Pharmaceuticals, and Kimberley Clark Corporation.  Munch attended Villanova University, The University of California and received his doctorate in Medicine and Biomedical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine.

This exhibition will be on view in the library’s Community Room during regular library hours unless a meeting is in progress.  For further information, please call the library at 908-766-0118.