African Ceremonies (Hardcover)

This is not the work of dilettantes or voyeurs, nor is it an exercise of academic minutiae, sensational reporting, or sentimental travel writing. AFRICAN CEREMONIES has been born of the drive in the human race to celebrate life and mystery, the wisdom of elders and officials who have granted access to private domains in a number of nations, and the hard work and devotion of two extraordinary women who have paid their dues in the field for decades.

There is something still missing, however, in their publishing odyssey. One can hope that they are hard at work on a volume to crown the splendor of their last six--a celebration of life in everyday terms. Who are better prepared to assemble visual albums of villages where there are no K-Marts? From cotton boll to blanket, palm nut to fragrant oil, log to canoe, their keen and practiced eyes can show us the process of lives much like our recent ancestors lived when they too cooked over open fires and chased birds from the fields before harvest.

Beckwith and Fisher have been photographing Africa for over thirty years, and like a ripe savoury wine African Ceremonies was many years in the making. With the expert collaboration of writers and designers each volume now contains three sections: Birth and Initiation; Courtship and Marriage; Royalty and Power in Volume 1; and Seasonal Rites; Beliefs and Worship; Spirits and Ancestors in Volume 2. The Dagara shaman Malidoma Patrice Som‚ from Burkina Faso, a special friend and guide to the photographers, sets the tone in his Foreword by saying that Beckwith and Fisher's travails are really a labour of love for Africa and that the two women responded "to an urgent call from the continent's ancestors to record sacred ceremonies before it is too late." And record they did: the two volumes contain over 700 pages and hundreds of exquisite colour photographs showing 43 ceremonies in 26 countries.

Birth, childhood, initiation, marriage and death are fateful events in an African's life. The first photograph in African Childhood of a Surma father in Ethiopia surrounded by five children with their bodies painted has universal appeal as do those of ochred Himba children in Namibia and young Krobo girls draped in their beautiful cloths from Ghana. The initiation ceremonies and practices leading a young boy or girl from childhood to adulthood are elaborate, and while they are sometimes difficult for us to look at they have nevertheless been part of African life for time immemorial. The rituals of the Taneka initiation in northern Benin, of Ndebele womanhood in South Africa or Maasai warriorhood in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya and Tanzania are deeply rooted in the land and its people. Glistening with red ochre body paint and adorned with various implements, marching one behind the other across the arid savannah, the page literally palpitates with the excitement and eagerness of these young Maasai boys to at last become adults.

The photographs of a Tuareg wedding deep in the Saharan desert pulsate with a life unknown to the viewer. Descended from the ancient Berbers of North Africa who fought and then mingled with invading Arabs centuries ago, the two-page photograph of guests arriving in their finery on their camels from across the arid land is a breathtaking symphony of colours any contemporary fashion designer would love to create. The beautiful photographs of African Brides later in the book are a reminder that, whatever one's culture, a wedding day is one of the most significant days in a woman's life.

In the best of times man and nature in Africa have lived in harmony and in the spirit of reciprocity, and across the continent seasonal rites are a time-honoured means by which people seek the protection of the spirit world for themselves, their land and their animals. The tall lean Dinka of the southern Sudan, elegant in their traditional beaded corsets, are devoted to their cattle. So are the Omo from the Omo river valley in southwest Ethiopia who perform an elaborate bull jumping ceremony to prove the young initiate's prowess. Bedik planting rites from southeast Senegal call on the spirit world to appease the powers of nature and bless the crops and the people who work the fields. The Ewe people of Togo and Ghana perform a yam blessing ceremony, and for the agriculturist Bobo of Burkina Faso nature is a benevolent entity that only human actions can upset. Their colourful bush mask rituals are meant to reestablish that equilibrium.

To most Africans the worlds of the living and the dead are equally real, and the funeral is the last transitional rite before the departed joins the world of the spirits forever. The Surma burial rites in the southwest region of Ethiopia on the border with Sudan, and the collective Dogon Dama funeral in Mali south of the Niger, which takes place every dozen years, are fantastic ceremonies to witness. To have been allowed to photograph them speaks volumes about Beckwith and Fisher's talent to win the confidence of their subjects as well as of their ability not to let the lens become an annoying intruder.

African Ceremonies is photographic story telling and adventure at its finest. It is art rather than ethnographic documentation and will, no doubt, be the definitive photographic record of African ceremonies for a long time to come..................

Regarding the book, I am particularly impressed by their treatment of sacredness without judgment and jaded lens. Indeed the art and form of ritual itself creates tradition. The music of these images is at once visual and alive celebrating the sacred as timeless expressions of culture and community.