New book highlights Africa's disappearing traditions – Robb Report

For more than forty years, award-winning photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have crisscrossed Africa to document the way of life of its traditional peoples, whom they have shared through more than a dozen books. Over the years, they have recorded hundreds of rituals and ceremonies that mark the changes of season and the essential stages of life – birth, transition to adulthood, parry and even death. Many of these secular rites are no longer practiced, with traditional methods gradually giving way to the modern world. Muse recently met Beckwith and Fisher in New York to talk about their recently published two-volume monumental African twilight, which pays tribute to the lifestyles on the way to extinction.

What led to your collaboration?

Angela Fisher: It's actually quite funny how met. Carol was finishing his first book on Maasai. Her father, who was wonderful, came from Boston, Kenya where Carol was working to give her a birthday present. The birthday present turned out to be a hot air balloon flight over the Maasai lands so that she could get the aerial footage she needed for the book. Simon, my brother, turned out to be the aircraft. Of course, Carol immediately took a liking to him, which led to a very interesting incident. When the balloon was thousands of meters in the air and flying over the Maasai territory, Simon plunged deep into Carol's eyes and said, "You know, there's something I'd really like to tell you. "

Carol Beckwith: Of course, my heart was pounding.

A F: Continuing to look deeply into his eyes, he says, "You know, I really want you to meet my sister."

CB: My heart sank.

A F: Carol really impressed Simon. He thought that she was just wonderful. He recognized the spirit of kinship between us two. When the balloon landed, he wrote me a very effusive letter about Carol. In the end, very fraternally, he wrote: "P.S .: I would like you to respond to this letter. I want to know exactly when you meet Carol and how the meeting went. We ended up a year later in Nairobi. It was in 1978. In the space of a week, we photographed side by side a ceremony of Maasai warriors on the border of Kenya and Tanzania.

CB: During this first week, we shared a dream. We had the vision that one day we would create a complete visual record of the most powerful ceremonies that upset Africans throughout their lives, from birth to death, what we have been doing ever since.

When did you realize that you might be among the last to see such a spectacle and ceremony?

CB: When we started working together, we already knew that these ceremonies were starting to disappear. We felt the urgency to register them before it was too late. Today, we estimate that 40% of what we have recorded now exists only in the pages of our books. Over the years, we had to go further and deeper in Africa to find ceremonies still intact.

How many cultural groups have you registered and how have you achieved them?
A F: We have documented more than 150 different cultures in 44 of Africa's 54 countries. We traveled in different ways, including canoes and muleteers, to join the Surma people in southwestern Ethiopia. We stayed with them for five weeks.

And did you find these traditional societies welcoming?

A F: We did it, but it's about gaining trust, which is very interesting in Africa. People often ask us, "How do you get such intimate photos of people?" You really need to gain confidence before you can access a ceremony and photograph it in a really real way. When we arrive in Africa, we take the African hour, which means that we slow down considerably. We live with people in communities. We make friends, gain trust, and then we start to photograph. We also believe in making photos we have taken of people to keep. Either polaroid way, or by showing them on the screen of a camera. When we started working in the '70s and' 80s, we were bringing large-format photographs to people we had photographed. The problem with obtaining photographs in Sudan, is that there has been a civil war for 30 years. Carol and I had a very big shoot with the Dinka in Sudan, but we could not come back.

Once the borders opened, we decided to go back there. We went down to the Nile marshes and found all the people we worked with. We are now returning the picture to an elder who had never seen himself in the mirror. Thirty years ago, he considered himself a handsome warrior and he was so moved.

CB: We always try to eat the same food as our host and we try to learn at least 50 words of their language, if it is the whole language. To do this, we write the words on our hands so we can look at people, take a look at our hand and take a look, and feel very comfortable to converse. with them. Even if the conversation is very simple. It starts on the hand and the words go down the arm as the days go by. The only drawback is that at night, when we have to take a shower, everything is washed and we have to write it all before the start of greetings.

So, what's next for you?

CB: Angela and I are asking everyone what we are going to do now that we have finished our 14 years of African twilight. We were asked to write our memoirs to tell the story in depth and to make a film about our work in Africa over the last four decades. We are very excited about these two possibilities. But the fact that we have unique archives of more than 500,000 images, a thousand hours of video and 200 illustrated magazines is important to us. When we are in the field, we write every night in our diaries, recording all the photos we took and all the really interesting things that happened during the day. We would like to find a wonderful place for these archives where they could be educated and be a great source of inspiration for future generations of Africans and the world.

We all come from Africa. Africa is our birthplace. The ancient cultures of the continent carry enormous messages that can both inspire our future and lead us into a world that, as Angela has often said, has a greater sense of peace and mutual understanding. As described by the work of Makao, the leader of Wodaabe, he is maagani yegitata, "Medicine to remember."