Patterns of Beauty is more than just a usual exhibition on going at the Tribal Art Gallery. It is a lifetime study of the works of Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith who share 50 years of collaborative works that have had them pitted as one of the best duos in art photography in the world.
Besides having 17 large format books in between them and getting published in international magazines like the National Geographic, the two have more than half a million photographs and negatives and also films under their belt.
Their double volume “African Ceremonies” (1999) won the United Nations Award for Excellence for “vision and understanding the role of cultural traditions in the pursuit of world peace”.
From the exhibition, one can get a sense of intimacy with their works that highlight the ceremonial aspect of communities across Africa and their day-to-day lives. The pictures on display in a sense bring to life African communities to an art gallery.
On one wall panel, you have paintings from the Akara tribe from the Omo River in Ethiopia which Angela says is cut off and little visited by the rest of the world which allows it to be a rich preservative of its body painting culture that is rampant during courtship.
Chalk and ochre are the main ingredients in the collage of paintings which depict the sociocultural norms of the Akara people.
The Suma tribe found their culture hanging on a wall. They live a little further north of the Kara tribe and near the Sudanese border. Their paintwork is distinctive in the application of spots from Guinea fowl plumage especially during courtship seasons.
Their designs steal from nature, from birds and wild animals with a large composition of paintwork being sourced from surrounding rocks.
“The Kara and Suma believe that painting should be taught to children when they are still young because although it is a fun time, it also plays an important role during courtship time for one to be able to get a partner and the better your painting, the higher the chances of getting a lifetime partner,” says Angela.
“Suma children stretch their ears at an early age which is a ritualistic part of beautifying their bodies. They see their body as a sculpture to be painted on from the red ochre concentric circles on their heads to face painting and earlobe stretching,” Angela says while pointing to portraits whose subjects’ bodies glisten with the red hue of red ochre soil.
For the Hamar tribe, their paintings are unique in the sense that they cover their bodies in ochre and animal fat.
“The beauty of a Hamar girl or man is to be fully covered in ochre. The Hamar girls also wear heavy iron amulets and bracelets for life with cowrie shells around as part of their embroidery to symbolise fertility. This is a phenomenon across nearly all the tribes that we have stayed with in Africa,” says Angela.
Hamar girls’ hairs hang in well-oiled strands which are worn when young and going into courtship age because they believe that the flicking of hair is very attractive to men.
Suma paintings depict men completely slathered with white chalk that contrasts with their dark skin leaving a beautiful contrast.
The Suma live in grassland areas and thus their paintings only get to their knees to prevent them from being rubbed off by the grass as they are walking.
Angela says that the Suma men are not shy at all and see their privates as an extension and a part of their creativity, they paint every part of their body.
The Dinka herders’ collage is probably the most standout series in the exhibition carrying with it a majestic aura from the simplicity of a nomad’s life.
The portraits showcase the strong patterns of the symbiotic relationship that a Dinka herdsman has with his cattle from childhood to adulthood where they lean on each other through the various stages of their lives.
They are hard to find.
“It took us three weeks to find a Dinka camp and when we did, we found one that had 2,000 heads of cattle in it. Their fires are made from dried cow dung which are lit in the evening and the smoke serves to chase away tsetse flies and mosquitoes from the camps. When the sun sets and the smoke rises, it makes the camp very beautiful and almost poetic to look at,” says Carol.
The Dinka have dry season cattle camps and one of the largest pictures in the exhibition was taken in one of them. In stature, it is a grand display of nature and humanity coexisting with the sunset covering the magical outlook of a panoramic scape of lyre-shaped cattle horns with silhouettes of herdsmen standing as sentinels beside their prized possessions.
Maasai warriors arriving for the Eunoto ceremony.
Photo credit: Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith
“For the Dinka, every boy is given an animal and he and that animal are one and they go through life with the same name, and during courtship, he shows out his animal but in reality, he is showing himself,” Angela says with relation to a framed silhouette close up of a Dinka boy and his companion oxen.
The story of the Dinka community doesn’t have a happy ending, however.
“With the civil war in Sudan, everything you see in these pictures has radically changed. The Dinka have lost a lot of their herds and the young Dinka have had to escape with groups of children to get to refugee camps such as Kakuma in Kenya. They still however have a powerful tradition with bits of it in corners around,” says Carol.
The portraits of beaded necklaces of the Nyangatom girls of Ethiopia have their own backdrop story. They wear the beads for life even when they sleep.
“The organisation of the beads and the details of their structure tell if a girl is married or available. The jewellery gives off a coded message of who you are, what stage of life you are in and what your status is, ”says Carol.
“For the Pende people, the most important thing for them is keeping their beautiful cultural heritage from being swallowed by the modern world. Their chief has a museum that has about 14,000 masks and has a lot of ceremonies going on to remind his people to keep their culture rich and alive.”
At the exhibition, the Pende portraits are probably some of the most beautiful portraits on display with subjects donning headgears with rich plumage and brass bells that form part of their ceremonial rituals.
The Pende portraits exude a rhythmic vibrant energy together with their drums, their brass bells and the general coy nature that attempts to mask their flamboyance.
The three headed mask portrait from the Pende bears a gruesome tale of their folklore.
“People say that it has the power to kill a wrongdoer and when this mask appears, everyone in the vicinity scampers off,” says Carol.
At the exhibition is also a portrait of a Wodaabe man's face painting with its own narrative. The portrait happens to be the only one in the series that is adamantly colourfully yellow. Carol narrates that during courtship, Wodaabe men scour the Sahel in search of chameleons.
“Once caught, these chameleons are dried and pulverised to create a cosmetic makeup that they apply to their faces. They believe that this make-up will transform a man's face the way a chameleon changes colour. It will rid him of hard look of the dry season and bring out his natural beauty that will become charming and irresistible to the girls.”
A Shai female initiates the ceremony and makes it to the exhibition too.
Here the female initiates who have been through months-long initiation ceremony come out during the Dipo ceremony with the trademark Dipo hats and in quiet elegance and enviable svelteness, they perform the klama dance, Carol notes that in the whole world, they are known to have some of the most elegant brides and if the portrait is anything to go by, she is spot on.
It is said that suitors watching the dance from the sidelines will often approach the family of the girl after the ceremony to make an offer for marriage.
“Over 40 percent of what we have photographed over 50 years of lives doesn’t exist anymore, and so this in a way is a valuable record of the existence of the beauty of Africa,” they say.
“We called these patterns of beauty to highlight the beautiful things we had seen across our encounters in Africa, whether it is patterns of adornment with paint, whether it is patterns of tradition like where a girl becomes a woman, whether it is patterns of beadwork, patterns of dance, we thought patterns of beauty would surmise our work across 44 countries.”
“The exhibition is more than just pictures; for us, it is 50 years of passion.”
