Photographer Hans Silvester travelled to the remote Omo Valley to capture the striking body art of the local Surma and Mursi tribes. Traditionally nomadic, the tribes decorate the territory of their naked bodies with whatever nature offers, such as leaves, flowers, grasses, butterfly wings and snail shells plus the occasional pen top or Kalashnikov cartridge. The spontaneously woven hats and headdresses are part fashion, part trophy display, part protection from the sun but mainly just the expression of a joyful creative spirit. Silvesters astonishing photographs capture these decorations to form a parade of African fashion that is as rich as it is ephemeral.

Reviews

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.) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.