Carl Berman spent 50 years tracking the lifeways of the People of the High Plateau, the ancient tribes who live along the rooftop of the world. With sketch-book and diary, canvas and paint, he created a living record of these remarkable inhabitants of the remote and desolate mountain regions of Asia and the Americas.

From his first trek into the Andes of South America in 1939 to his visit to the high reaches of the Himalayas of Bhutan in 1984, he sought out these complex, beautifully costumed people in order to capture and chronicle their rapidly disappearing way of life. He lived with them, shared their food, and participated in their folkways and celebrations.

In Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, India, Kashmir, Ladakh, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan, he saw evidence of ancient similarities in dress, religious tenets, social institutions, even physical attributes. His admiration for the simplicity and beauty of the cultures he found is clear in each brush-stroke and each word he wrote in his journals of his travels, journals published as People of the High Plateau, Howell Press, 1988.

Carl Berman's paintings are a great achievement. His palette captured the clear, icy air of the 8,000 to 12,000-foot altitudes where the people of the high plateau live and work. The rich, warm tones of their garments and their ornaments, the textures of their everyday and the glow of their spirit fill his masterful canvases. Perhaps most extraordinarily, though, the humanity of these people comes through the miles and the years to us. Here are the living, breathing souls, full of joy, grief . . . life.

"The People are not inhabitants of some vague dream world," he wrote, "but are the vibrant members of our family of man." People of the High Plateau was the work of a lifetime, a rich portrait of the peoples who have endured for millennia, but who are inevitably disappearing before the great wave of the modern world.

Carl Berman's paintings, gouaches and pen drawings have been displayed in a number of museums here and abroad, and also are counted in private collections, where they are valued alike for their vibrancy and their graphic impact