Carol Beckwith
&
Angela Fisher
Over 45 years of work on the African continent have carried Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher across 300,000 miles in exploration of more than 150 cultural groups from 40 different countries. Having been granted unprecedented access to sacred African rituals and ceremonies rarely documented or seen by the outside world, they have been instrumental in preserving the vanishing cultural practices and heritage of African peoples. Their work presents the power, complexity and celebration found within the rituals of African tribal life, and they continue to be honoured worldwide for their contributions to the understanding and celebration of cultural diversity.
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“We feel privileged to photograph these cultures that possess a wealth of knowledge that should be celebrated, shared, and honored. It is our life’s passion to document and create a powerful visual record of these vanishing ways of life for future generations.”
Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher
Among seventeen best-selling books, their defining body of work, “African Ceremonies,” is a a double volume, pan-African study of rituals and rites of passage from birth to death, covering 93 ceremonies from 26 countries. This book won the United Nations Award for Excellence for “vision and understanding of the role of cultural traditions in the pursuit of world peace.”
Carol and Angela have been honored twice with the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in race relations for “outstanding contributions to the understanding of cultural diversity and prejudice”. They are recipients of the African Heritage Lifetime Achievement Award and the WINGS WorldQuest Lifetime Achievement Award, the Explorer’s Club’s Lowell Thomas Award for those who have distinguished themselves in the field of exploration, and the Royal Geographical Society of London’s Cherry Kearton Medal for their “contribution to the photographic recording of African ethnography and ritual”. Most recently, the pair were named Honorary Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of their lifetimes’ work and outstanding support of the Society and geography.
The pair have made five films about traditional Africa, including Way of the Wodaabe (1986), The Painter and the Fighter (1990), two programs for the Millennium Series Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World, and, most recently, they co-produced Maasai Eunoto (2024), which has been receiving much international acclaim.
Their numerous photographic exhibitions have received acclaim in museums and galleries around the world, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, National Geographic Museum, Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, Borges Cultural Center of Buenos Aires, National Museums of Kenya, and venues in Australia, Europe, and Japan. The Beckwith and Fisher have lectured at such venues as the Royal Geographic Society in London, The Explorers Club in New York City, the National Geographic Society in Washington D.C. and many other cities across the USA.
Beckwith and Fisher's work has been honored though a 40+ year long association with the National Geographic Society including ten feature articles in National Geographic Magazine, three as cover stories; three films produced for television; two sponsored Nat Geo Live U.S. lecture tours and eleven lectures at National Geographic headquarters; two exhibitions and the publication of a book.