Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa (Hardcover)

~ Hans Silvester (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this stunning collection of photographs, Silvester (Ethiopia: Peoples of the Omo Valley) celebrates the unique art of the Surma and Mursi tribes of the Omo Valley, on the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Sudan. These nomadic people have no architecture or crafts with which to express their innate artistic sense. Instead, they use their bodies as canvases, painting their skin with pigments made from powdered volcanic rock and adorning themselves with materials obtained from the world around them—such as flowers, leaves, grasses, shells and animal horns. The adolescents of the tribes are especially adept at this art, and Silvester's superb photographs show many youths who, imbued with an exquisite sense of color and form, have painted their beautiful bodies with colorful dots, stripes and circles, and encased themselves in elaborate arrangements of vegetation and found objects. This art is endlessly inventive, magical and, above all, fun. In his brief text, Sylvester worries that as civilization encroaches on this largely unexplored region, these people will lose their delightful tradition. 160 color photographs. (Apr.)
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Product Description

An unprecedented series of images showing the Omo people's imaginative body decoration and embellishments.

The scene of tribal conflicts and guerrilla incursions, Ethiopia's Omo Valley is also home to fascinating rites and traditions that have survived for thousands of years. The nomadic peoples who inhabit this valley share a gift for body painting and elaborate adornments borrowed from nature, and Hans Silvester has captured the results in a series of photographs made over the course of numerous trips.

In this region of East Africa, the rivers that run through the dry savannas are home to abundant flowers, papyrus, and wild fruit trees, and this luxuriance becomes an invitation to creativity and spectacle. Within hand's reach, a multitude of plants inspire fanciful and ephemeral self-decoration, and the Omo react spontaneously: a leaf, root, seed pod, or flower is quickly transformed into an accessory. As in the West one might don a hat, people create caps from tufts of grass. As one would knot a tie or scarf, they ornament themselves with banana leaves or a stem laden with flowers. These decorations are embellished with butterfly wings, buffalo horns, boar's teeth, colorful feathers, and the like, and are further enhanced by body painting with pigments made from powdered stone, plants, berries, and river mud.

Here is a priceless record of a unique and increasingly fragile way of life, one threatened by conflict, climate change, and tourism. 160 color illustrations.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson (April 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500543585
• ISBN-13: 978-0500543580
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #707,163 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #31 in	Books > Travel > Africa > Ethiopia & Djibouti
  #71 in	Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Anthropology > Ethnology
  #82 in	Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Travel > Africa

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beauty does not need a context, June 13, 2008

By	ChevalierMalFait (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

I do not (yet) own this book, but I spent half an hour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop recently in an absolute trance paging through it. The sole review here trashing this beautiful book struck me as so unfair that I feel compelled to write a rebuttal.

The reviewer is concerned that this collection of photographs does not represent the daily lives and cultural practices of the people it represents. That in fact the attention these people are getting from tourists and photographers is encouraging them to show off and thus changing their cultural practices from what they were in isolation. All that may be true. But none of it obscures or in any way detracts from the undeniable truth that these are some of the most beautiful, creative, and uniquely adorned people in the world. To page through this book is to be transported momentarily into a world of sensual beauty that few of us even dare to imagine exists. The viewer who is open minded enough to appreciate it is gifted with an insight into the beauty of a people he/she might not have known even existed. Is that a bad thing? I don't think so.

Does photographing these people and the attention that ensues change them? Probably. Is that a bad thing? I don't know. But I do know it is up to the people being photographed to decide that. It is up to them to decide whether or not, and in what manner, they want to be photographed, not some outsider who believes their culture should be left intact. In a globalizing world, I can think of many types of attention from the outside world that would not be quite so benign. If it was done without compulsion, which appears to be the case, then I think that broadcasting the beauty of a people for the world to see is a good thing. Change is inevitable. Hopefully this sort of attention will help ensure that the change is positive.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tribal Decoration, July 27, 2008

By	Noemi (California) - See all my reviews

As a visual artist I can tell you that when I first picked this book up in my local library, the fantastic and surprising images nearly took my breath away!! I took it over to another artist's house and we looked through it together. Deciding right then to get our own copies. The wild painting on the beautiful black skin is very similar to the free and easy strokes in my own paintings. I am considering getting the other African related book my the same author.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Natural Fashion: Tribal decorations from Africa by Hans Silvester, August 29, 2008

By	Lone Hansen "Miss Denmark" (Bainbridge Island , WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is an amazing book. I am a painter and it made me want to get in my studio and start paintings, the textures, the patterns and then now and then the sad contrast of weapons and Natures beauty, brings you right back to "real" world.I can't stop looking at the pictures, they draw you in. It is truly a beautiful people. The first time I saw it ,was at a friends house and I just had to go get it for myself. My friend offered to loan it to me, but that just wasn't enough. Thank you Hans Silvester for creating this book. Lone Hansen, Bainbridge Island , WA