The Akha, visions of a vanishing race: The Akha people are a hill tribe of subsistence farmers distributed in small villages among the mountains of China, Myanmar, Laos and Thailand. Over the last ten years I have visited several of these villages in fairly remote regions of northern and western Laos. In some cases I have returned to the same village three or four times over the years to see old friends. The outside world is beginning to touch their lives. Customs and traditions are disappearing fast and in some cases entire villages are packing up everything they can carry and heading down to the roads. This is a small selection of the Akha portraits I have shot in recent years...