My post about the beautiful people of the Surma and Mursi tribes in the L'Omo Valley on the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sudan, who were photographed by Hans Silvester, is by far the favorite of StoryCulture's readers. I am happy to spread the news that Silvester's new book Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration From Africa (which features these photographs) is available at amazon.com: click here for more information.
Just in case you missed it, you can view my initial story about the photographs here.
February is rolling out a string of gray days. I started the month expressing mood with tonalist landscapes, but my inner-Fauve broke loose after a few days of raw umber induced blues.
The Norwegian government opened a global seed vault on Svalbard (February 28, 2008) as a service to the world. The Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg and African Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai placed the first seeds in the vault.
This video clip features Sami musician Mari Boine singing Elle inside the mountain in Svalbard during the opening ceremony.
To read the lyrics and learn more about the film read my earlier post on the Kautokeino Rebellion film here.
Every now and then I discover with great joy a part of our world which leaves me filled with wonder. In the case of the Surma and Mursi people in Ethiopia, my delight is also visual.
Silvester describes his mission, "what’s most important for me is saving, in some way, as much as possible of this truly living art, which is mobile, changing, subject to infinite variation, and whose constituent elements are simple and form a link between man and nature. It seems to me that our modern painting found the purpose of these elements, this simplicity, and used it as its foundation."
HERE IS A SLIDE SHOW OF MORE THAN FIFTY OF SILVESTER'S IMAGES
I'm happy to report that Hans Silvester has a new book featuring these photographs. The title is Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa. It is available now at amazon.com HERE.
Hans Silvester published part one of this two book series in April 2007. It is Ethiopia: Peoples of the Omo Valley. The first volume of the deluxe two-volume set presents the everyday lives of the Omo people, their rituals, parades, children’s games, and even their battles. Silvester's text details his experience.
Learn more about Hans Silvester's time with the L'omo people at the Marlborough Gallery website HERE.
I've written in StoryCulture about how my grandparents hid their indigenous heritage from their children and neighbors, either out of shame -- or just because life was easier when people identified them as members of the caucasian Christian majority.
Cultural genocide is often an overt act of aggression... and sometimes, as Mari Boine points out, its a societal brainwashing passed down from generation to generation.
This video was recorded in Oslo (spring 2008). Mari talks about how she, like too many Sami on both sides of the Atlantic, hated her heritage when she was younger. When Mari was in her mid-twenties, she embraced her ethnicity and started to write and sing joiks.
Three days ago this little storm came directly at us. Weak rotation. When to worry? The entire center of the cloud was spinning as it came overhead. I put away my camera and headed for cover, while my husband remained giddily outdoors with the absence of sirens.
This recent sunset didn't have the perfect composition for a fine art photograph, and it was way too over the top to inspire one of my paintings. However, my imagination was caught by the solitary massiveness of a cloud which hovered in the midst watercolor washed sky. An ominous kingdom about to engulf the island beneath it.
In a practical fantasy, I dream about a better camera than my old glorified point and shoot Canon G3. I'm admittedly too lazy when it comes to monkeying with settings to deserve the investment. Photographer and storm chaser Jim Reed recently captured wonderful images of storm clouds while field testing the new Nikon D700. His work fascinates me. Visit Jim's website here.
