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by Carol Beckwith (Author), Angela Fisher (Author)
Carol Beckwith has made a name for herself photographing the peoples of Africa. Niger is a country of astonishing diversity of climates, landscapes and African ethnic groups. For this extended photographic essay, she traveled among the Wodaabe nomads of central Niger for a year and a half, giving her intimate access to the daily life of a family of cattle herders. Marion Van Offelen provides the text accompanying Beckwith's marvelous photos.
These modern nomadic Africans were the true descendants of the ancient Libyans. These nomads are one of the few tribes whose attire still resembles the long garments worn by the Libyans on ancient Egyptian tomb paintings.
Among the few surviving nomads in the world, these tall, slender, handsome African desert dwellers live as they have for centuries, moving their herds across a parched landscape. The central events of their lives and the focus of this book are two great celebrations, culminating in a beautiful and stirring sequence of festive dances. The highly readable text and the breathtaking color photographs (more than 140 of them) taken by Carol Beckwith over eighteen months of living among the Wodaabe follow Mokao and his group through a year's journey. We spend a day with them at their dry season encampment, accompany them to Eggo Well and to the marketplace at Intawella, move with them through their long, northbound rainy season migration, and settle down with them for the festivities that highlight their year of joyous gatherings of thousands of people and the amazing round of dance pageants that culminate in the selection of their most handsome and charismatic young men.
Carol Beckwith was born in the United States and educated at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. She has been cited by United Press International as "foremost among photographers who have recorded the cultures of the Far East, Pacific, and Africa." She is the author of three previous books on African cultures, all published by Abrams. Her first, Maasai, won the prestigious Annisfield-Wolf Award in Race Relations; her second, Nomads of Niger, was based on her three-year experience living with the Wodaabe nomads and is the subject of her National Geographic film Way of the Wodaabe, and her third, African Ark, with Angela Fisher, is a study of the people and cultures of the Horn of Africa.
Angela Fisher was born in Australia and educated at Adelaide University. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed Africa Adorned (Abrams), a 14-year study of traditional jewelry and body decoration covering the entire continent of Africa. It was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and the subject of a National Geographic 34-page cover story. Her second book, African Ark, with Carol Beckwith, received the Institute of Human Origins prize, The Golden Hand of Lucy, and the Annisfield- Wolf Award in Race Relations. A jewelry designer as well, Fisher has exhibited her jewelry and photographs throughout Europe, America, Australia, and Africa.
Large Hardcover
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