Open lens

While trailing the migration of nomads from Central Asia, photographer Livia Monami lands in China's Guizhou province to find its multiethnic culture sweeping her. Mike Peters reports. Mike Peters reports.

Her camera has captured villagers who live the centuries-old lifestyle of hunter-gatherers in the shadow of modern banks, traditional opera scenes in which ancestral ghosts appear as human figures that dispel evil and bring auspicious influence, and Shamans telling fortunes in a muddy Guizhou street.

Livia Monami, 50, wasn't supposed to be a photographer or wander through rural Southwest China, embracing the traditions of Guizhou's residents, as she recently did for six weeks.