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We played the game Marco Polo, you and me. Swam under the water with our eyes closed while our friends ran around the pool and jumped in and said “Polo” when we surfaced like porpoises and shouted “Marco.” A game of deceit, based on telling a lie about where we were. And the game comes from the real Marco Polo, who came back from China telling stories of kingdoms and glories nobody in Venice could believe. Marco Polo the very real person died as a lie about who he was.

And on campuses all around the world the argument rages about how many people there were in the new world before the Europeans came ashore with their weapons and germs. The visitors claimed there wasn’t much going on, the land laid fallow and undeveloped, and the indigenous scientists say, nonsense, we were civilized too, in quantities we cannot imagine, millions and millions of us, tending our gardens before inhaling your bacterias.

And now there are a few new victims, waiting for another helicopter to fly overhead, bristling with telephoto lenses and vials of penicillin and twelve thousand years of civilization, built on too much murder, rape and slavery to quantify. Yes, we’ve had Mozart and Newton and Shakespeare, but who reads these eons from now without judging how we deal with the new Amazonians, playing their desperate game of Marco Polo, where being tagged means an instant loss of both wisdom and innocence?

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The New Amazonians allowed themselves to be shot for the first time in an artistic experiment called “Make the Dress,” organized by Mr. T and Mrs. T, whose workshops are featured in the current JPG Magazine.

Also shooting:

Matt Adamik

Maria Tizon

Jeni Stembridge

Melissa Quinn

Allegra V

Emily Ward

Adrian King

Jesse Merz

and Lynne Krizik

You can see more photos of the New Amazonians at my facebook (what!?!) page, and another larger collection including pix of the shooters can be seen at The New Amazonians on my website.