I’m out of town this week, so I’m tweaking and reposting an
article that I originally posted in 2012. This book was a best-seller in
Offramp Gallery’s (which I ran from 2008-2016) bookshop.
Tired of politics? Here’s just the thing to take your mind
to a better place.
Hans Silvester's stunning photographs of the painted people
of the Surma and Mursi tribes in Southern Ethiopia are a magical
portal to childhood fantasy and play, to a lost world of unfettered,
unfiltered imagination and creativity. I found it hard to believe that there
weren't stylists and make-up artists off camera staging this fantasy fashion
show -- beautiful brown faces and bodies vibrantly painted with abstract motifs
in ochre, red, yellow, green and white, and adorned with colorful headdresses
of flowers, leaves, pods, mud, fruit and feathers. Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa contains 160
of Silvester's astonishing color photographs and is accompanied by an essay, Art
and the Body.
According to Silvester:
"These body paintings are totally free, and yet they never repeat themselves, and there is no underlying system. Each one is extraordinarily fresh. The technique and skill of body decoration, with its infinite variations, is learned at a very early age, with mothers painting their babies. But it is adolescents who devote themselves most avidly to this activity. Some of them are immensely talented. They have a highly original sense of colour and form, whereas others can by clumsy and need to start all over again."
Silvester believes that the absence of mirrors, until very recently, may have contributed to the freedom of the tribes' creativity. There was no self reflection, only the approval (or disapproval) of others in the tribe.
Inevitably, the tribes are being discovered by the outside world and are becoming tourist attractions, intensifying and altering the practice of body painting. In one Mursi village, tourism already has a strong foothold. According to Silvester:
"Then the 4x4s arrive, at about 10 a.m., the natives are ready to welcome them, sporting their accessories and bodies painted for the occasion. This somewhat surreal show lasts until around midday, and then the tourists depart and 'performers' are paid in local currency . . . The money is immediately converted into alcohol or weapons, two flourishing trades. The whole business reeks of tragedy."
Tragedy indeed.
Click here to purchase from Amazon.com
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