MAASAI
MAASAI
1980
By Carol Beckwith
Publisher: Abrams/Abradale, USA and UK, Germany and France
Text by the distinguished Maasai scholar Tepilit Ole Saitoti and photographs by Carol Beckwith. Maasai documents the living story of the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania. It recounts the ancient legends, reveals the songs and prayers and vividly recounts the rites of passage for a Maasai - childhood, initiation, warrior rank and finally elderhood. The daily work of maintaining the herds, beading skirts and building huts and kraals; the warriors' games, dances and flirtations and the elders' quiet moments of contemplation.
AFRICA ADORNED
AFRICA ADORNED
1984
By Angela Fisher
Publisher: Collins U.K, Abrams USA, and Germany, France and Italy.
This seven-year study of jewellery and body decoration across the African continent illustrates the adornments of both everyday life and major ceremonial events. Among the peoples of Africa, even those who eke out a nomad’s existence, one sees objects of great beauty and style, often of extraordinary craftsmanship and great value—cast in gold or wrought in silver, inlaid with semi-precious stones, ivory, and coral. Jewellery is also often of important symbolic significance and can reveal a wealth of information about the wearer.
NOMADS OF NIGER
NOMADS OF NIGER
1983
By Carol Beckwith
Publisher: Abrams/Abradale, USA, and France.
Text by Marion van Offelen and photographs by Carol Beckwith. This study follows the Wodaabe of Niger—tall, handsome, nomadic desert dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa—through the cycle of a year, focussing on the herdsman Mokao and his family. The journey takes us to their dry season encampment, the well, the marketplace, and on their long northward rainy season migration, ending with the amazing round of dance pageants that culminate in the selection of their most handsome and charismatic young men.
AFRICAN ARK
AFRICAN ARK
1990
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Inc., USA, and UK, France, Germany and Italy.
For centuries, the Horn of Africa has sheltered an astonishing variety of human societies against the storms of the world. Images selected from this book include Amhara Christian and Falasha Jewish ceremonies of the Ethiopian highlands, Afar warriors’ dangerous ball games in the low-lying Rift Valley, ecstatic pilgrims at the shrines of Sheikh Hussein and the caves of Sof Omar, and extraordinary ‘jumping the bull’ and stick-fighting scenes in the Omo river region of Southwest Ethiopia.
AFRICAN CEREMONIES I
AFRICAN CEREMONIES I
1999
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Inc., USA, and UK, France, Germany and Italy.
A 10-year field project documenting African rituals and rites of passage from birth to death across the continent, this landmark work portrays 93 ceremonies from 26 countries, including initiations, courtship and marriage, royal coronations, including the silver jubilee of an Ashanti king, healing practices, religions including voodoo rituals and death and the journey to the afterworld, including fantasy coffins. It has won numerous awards, including the U.N. Award of Excellence ‘For vision and understanding of the role of cultural traditions in the pursuit of world peace’.
AFRICAN CEREMONIES II
AFRICAN CEREMONIES II
1999
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Inc., USA, and UK, France, Germany and Italy.
A 10-year field project documenting African rituals and rites of passage from birth to death across the continent, this landmark work portrays 93 ceremonies from 26 countries, including initiations, courtship and marriage, royal coronations, including the silver jubilee of an Ashanti king, healing practices, religions including voodoo rituals and death and the journey to the afterworld, including fantasy coffins. It has won numerous awards, including the U.N. Award of Excellence ‘For vision and understanding of the role of cultural traditions in the pursuit of world peace’.
PASSAGES
PASSAGES
2000
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Inc., USA and France.
Images from ‘African Ceremonies’, 100 best selected photographs originally exhibited in the ‘Passages’ exhibition, which opened in Brooklyn Museum, NYC, in 2000 and is now travelling in the USA, Europe and South America. This book is a condensed record of the most visual ceremonies in Africa, and acts also as a catalogue for the travelling exhibition.
AFRICAN CEREMONIES CONCISE
AFRICAN CEREMONIES CONCISE
2002
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Inc., USA and France.
With accompanying music CD. Edited one-volume overview of the African Ceremonies double volume, featuring tribal ceremonies from across the continent.
SURMA
SURMA
2002
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: Taller Experimental, Santiago Chile
Of all the peoples in the African continent, the Surma are the most renowned for their body painting using a mixture of chalk and water and creating striking designs to attract the opposite sex. They are a group of 30,000 pastoralists who live in the remote wilderness region of the southwest corner of Ethiopia. The rituals of body painting occur during the courtship period following the harvest, once the rainy season is over. At this time, elders teach children the art of body painting while adolescents put great imagination and energy into their own decoration, with suitors being asked to paint their beloved. The courtship climaxes with the frenzied Donga stick fights, fought with 6ft hardwood poles to prove masculinity, settle personal vendettas, and win wives.
KARO
KARO
2002
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: Taller Experimental, Santiago Chile
The photographs in this book comprise a 15 year study of the art of body painting amongst the Karo people of the remote Omo River region of southwest Ethiopia. The Karo, numbering only 2,000, are renowned artists who decorate their bodies using a rich palette of colour including white chalk, yellow and red ochre, and charcoal. Their painted designs echo the patterns and forms found in the natural world around them. The images in this limited edition capture the most brilliant moments of body decoration in the annual cycle of ceremonies held in the peaceful weeks after the harvest is completed.
MAASAI, HIMBA, HAMAR
MAASAI, HIMBA, HAMAR
2002
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: Taller Experimental, Santiago Chile
A study of ochre body painting amongst the pastoralists of Eastern and Southern Africa – the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania, the Himba of Namibia and the Hamar of Ethiopia. Ochre is one of the most popular and striking forms of body decoration, used both in everyday and ceremonial occasions. Made from a mineral compound high in iron-ore content, it ranges in colour from the fiery orange hues adorning Maasai warriors to the rich brown shades of the Himba and Hamar peoples.
BUY IT HERE - UK: Beckwith and Fisher - africanceremonies@btinternet.com
DINKA: 2008
DINKA: 2008
2008
By Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith
Publisher: Reproducciones, Chile, and Timeless Art Productions, California
Dinka of Southern Sudan are one of the most outstanding groups of pastoralists on the African continent. Covered with ash and up to 7ft 6in tall, the Dinka were referred to as gentle giants by the early explorers. Living in perfect harmony with their cattle, they believe their animals are their essential link to God. During the dry season they move their herds in search of pasture through the vast swamplands of the River Nile, crossing its many tributaries and surviving on the milk of their cattle. Numbering more than two million and one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa, the Dinka are also among the least touched by western ways. This limited edition book is printed on special art paper, is hand bound and presented in a box with a signed original print.
LAMU
LAMU
2009
By Carol Beckwith, Angela Fisher, David Coulson and Nigel Pavitt
Publisher: Rizzoli
Off the coast of northern Kenya is the ancient Swahili island of Lamu—Kenya’s oldest town and one of the original Swahili settlements along coastal East Africa. Listed by UNESCO as a prestigious world heritage site, Lamu offers the hypnotic experience of entering another world. A collaboration between four photographers, Lamu presents 300 exquisite, specially commissioned photographs and opens a window onto the island’s rich history, inspiring architecture and interiors, enchanting crafts, and lush natural beauty.
FACES OF AFRICA
FACES OF AFRICA
2004
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Publisher: National Geographic Society, USA and France
A study of life from cradle to grave, examining seduction, spirituality, beauty, creativity, rhythm, and wisdom of individuals from across Africa, with personal stories from the authors included in the text.
DINKA: 2010
DINKA: 2010
DINKA: LEGENDARY CATTLE KEEPERS OF SUDAN, 2010
By Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith
Publisher: Rizzoli
In breathtakingly poignant images, Fisher and Beckwith present a story that started with their first visit to the Dinka thirty years ago. Living in harmony with their cattle, the Dinka have survived years of war only to find their culture on the brink of vanishing forever. Where the White Nile River reaches Dinka country, it spills over 11,000 square miles of flood plain to form the Sudd, the largest swamp in the world. In the dry season, it provides abundant pasture for cattle, and this is where the Dinka set up their camps. The men dust their bodies and faces with gray ash—protection against flies and lethal malarial mosquitoes, but also considered a mark of beauty. Covered with this ash and up to 7ft 6in tall, the Dinka were referred to as ‘gentle’ or ‘ghostly’ giants by the early explorers. The Dinka call themselves ‘jieng’ and ‘mony-jang,’ which means ‘men of men.’
PAINTED BODIES
PAINTED BODIES
African Body Painting, Tattoos, and Scarification
By Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
2012
The seminal volume on body painting and adornment by the world’s preeminent photographers of African culture. Following the international masterpiece Africa Adorned, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have focused on the traditions of body painting spanning the vastly unique cultures of the African continent. In a contemporary world so fascinated with tattoos and piercings, Beckwith and Fisher document the origins of these fashionable adornments as passed down through African tribal culture._Featured are portraits of the richly colored, detailed, and exquisite body paintings of the Surma, Karo, Maasai, Himba, and Hamar peoples, among others. Drawing from expeditions in the field and firsthand experiences with African peoples and cultures over the past thirty years and with more than 250 spectacular photographs, this is the definitive work on the expressiveness and imagination of African cultural painting of the human body.