Travel And Tourism Trends: Ethiopia

Showing posts with label Ethiopia. Show all posts

Anthony Pappone | Ethiopia's Omo Valley

"If you take a picture of a human that does not make him noble, there is no reason to take this picture. That is my way of seeing things." - Sebastiao Salgado

Readers and followers of my blog know of my distaste for the current spate of photographs that depict indigenous people who are encouraged (monetarily or otherwise) to wear decorative accessories that are not natural to them. Photographers who travel to the Omo Valley are particular susceptible to this 'disease', and are insensitive (but rarely unaware) to the impact transforming members of the various Omo Valley tribes into fashion models with outlandish headgear and accessories.

The exploitation of these tribes by some photographers, travelers and tourists, who view them as nothing but beautiful displays, continues despite the effort of well-intentioned travel companies.

Anthony Pappone's Portraits in The Omo Valley is certainly not one of these insensitive exploitative photographs. His photographs of Omo Valley tribal members are beautiful and simple. There is no artificiality in his portraits, nor is there accessories intended to dupe the viewers. The Omo Valley people are beautiful in their simplicity, and Anthony's photographs prove to us that there is no need for deceit in the representation of these people.

Anthony Pappone is an Italian photographer specializing in travel, festival, portrait, tribes and ceremony photography around the world. Just a traveler before becoming a photographer, he caught the bug during a festival in Ladakh, and he started on a career of following festivals and religious ceremonies wherever these occurred. From Ethiopia to Nagaland, from West Africa's Benin, Ghana, Mali to Yemen...he documented festivals and everyday life with his wide angle lenses.

Christian Bobst | Meskel in Lalibela

Meskel is an annual religious holiday in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church commemorating the discovery of the True Cross by Queen Helena (Saint Helena) in the fourth century. It is celebrated for two days beginning September 26th, and commemorates the legend that in the year 326, Queen Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, discovered the cross upon which Christ was crucified.

It is in Lalibela, one of Ethiopia's most religious towns, that Christian Bobst photographed the ceremonies and rituals observing this fascinating religious festival. During the ceremony, a priest rubs the pilgrims with the holy Lalibela Cross to heal diseases or drive out devils of the bodies of the believers. The Lalibela Cross is thought to date to the 12th century and is considered one of Ethiopia's most precious religious and historical heirlooms.

Christian tells me he used two Fuji X-T1 camera bodies and prime lenses between 14mm to 35mm, as well as using the cameras' wi-fi capabilities to capture high angle shots. He also appreciated the lightness in weight, smaller size and the retro look of the Fujis.

He also tells me that during the ceremony, one of the pilgrims saw the pictures on the screen of Christian's iPhone while taking the high angle shots on the X-T1 he had perched on a monopod. The pilgrim liked the photographs so much that he persuaded the presiding priest to allow Christian to photograph right in the center of the crowd.

Christian Bobst is a Swiss documentary photographer who originally studied graphic design. For almost 15 years, he worked for advertising agencies like Young & Rubicam/Switzerland and Jung von Matt/Germany as an Art- and Creative Director, before deciding to move on into documentary photography in 2010. He now works as a freelance photographer, and is a member of 13 Photo in Zürich.

John Rowe | The Donga

For a complete change of pace, here's an Ethiopian feature.

The Donga (also called Saginay) is the stick-fight practiced by the Suri, a tribe in the Omo Valley. The Suri adopt stick fighting - which is a traditional way for young men to impress girls. The often bloody fight is a demonstration of bravery, and underscores the men's desire to become cattle warriors.

Generally, stick fighting is practiced so young men can find wives. The ideal time to stick fight is just after it rains, and involves various Suri villages. With 20 to 30 people on each side, the stick fights can be extremely dangerous despite having referees to make sure that rules are followed. It's said that the fights have recently led to fights with guns, in which people have been wounded.

Sometimes when a young man has a dispute over a woman, he challenges his rival to a stick fight. His village joins him by starting the age-old ritual by singing, and carrying their fighting sticks that are carved in the shapes of penises (of course).

The Donga is a gallery of incredibly compelling monochrome photographs of this ritualistic fight by photographer John Rowe.

John Rowe is a photographer and film maker who first trained at the US Navy School of Photography when he was 18 years old. He's also a successful businessman who has founded and managed companies which develop software and digital media for the entertainment industry.

He has also devoted a tremendous amount of time, energy and financial assistance to humanitarian work in Africa. He is also helping to save babies born in the Omo Valley from the brutal tradition of Mingi. Mingi is a tradition practiced for many generations by tribes of the Omo Valley like the Kara, labels certain children as “cursed.”

For more on John's efforts on this worthwhile cause, drop by PetaPixel's post on the subject.

Matilda Temperley | Omo Valley

A few years ago, Matilda Temperley traveled to Ethiopia's Omo Valley with a portable studio to, as she says it, to "isolate the subjects from their surroundings, extracting the individual from his or her contextual backgrounds so as to bring their gaze, unmediated, into the image."

The Omo valley is at a crossroad of cultures and civilizations and many tribal groups, such as the Mursi, Suri, Ebore and others live around the South Sudanese, Ethiopian and Kenyan borders. These tribes have developed their own unique styles of self decoration to differentiate themselves from their neighbors. The Mursi women, as an example, have their lower teeth removed and ceramic plates inserted that stretch the lips.

"Tribal porn", as some correctly describe it, is what fuels the gradual and steady increase in the tour groups, and there's been an increasing stream of westerners into the valley in the recent years. Tourist cash in making its way into the tribal regions, and is polluting their cultures. The fashions in the more accessible Omo Valley villages are changing, with tribes people adorning themselves with as much accessories as they can find in order to beg for photos.

It's regrettable and very sad to see these proud Omo Valley inhabitants being encouraged by many unscrupulous tour agents, tourists and photographers to do so, at the risk of losing their identity and age-old cultures.

The Ethiopian government's actions are also a contributing factor. The forthcoming hydroelectric Gibe III dam is expected to cause potential humanitarian disaster for the region's 500,000 inhabitants. The dam will allow Ethiopia to become a major energy exporter, but will also allow for large-scale commercial farming through irrigated agriculture along the banks of the Omo. Another change in the ways of life for the tribes of the Omo Valley.

Matilda Temperley is a British photographer, who had career in tropical infectious diseases before taking up photography. She is known for her stylised portraiture of marginalised societies.

Leyland Cecco | The Pilgrims

Leyland Cecco is a freelance photographer, writer and history teacher based in Cairo, Egypt, and has photographed in Uganda, Ethiopia, Turkey, Northern Iraq and Palestine, as well as in Iran, Syria and Egypt. His work has been featured by Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Roads and Kingdoms, The Daily Beast, Vocativ, Popular Archaeology, and other international publications.

I particularly liked Pilgrims, his work from Lalibela, where he followed pilgrims to this town in northern Ethiopia, famous for its monolithic rock-cut churches. It's one of Ethiopia's holiest cities, second only to Aksum, and is a center of pilgrimage for much of the country. Its population is almost completely Ethiopian Orthodox Christian. The layout and names of the major buildings in Lalibela are widely accepted, especially by the local clergy, to be a symbolic representation of Jerusalem.

Larger sized photographs of this series have also been featured by Roads & Kingdoms, an independent journal of food, politics, travel and culture. It was voted the 2013 Gold Winner for Best Travel Journalism Site by the Society of American Travel Writers.

John Quintero | Monochromes

Rather than feature a specific photo gallery or photo story of a culture or area, this post is about the lovely monochrome portraits by John Quintero.

As my readers probably know by now, I'm soon to lead The Sacred Cities Photo Expedition-Workshop to Varanasi and Vrindavan, where I hope some of my own personal photography will be in black and white. On the workshop's schedule are photo shoots documenting the ancient tradition of Indian wrestling, known as kushti, in various gyms (akaharas) that are sprinkled in the old city of Varanasi.

The monochrome portraits by Mr Quintero weren't only of traditional wrestlers, but of Ethiopian tribes people in the Omo Valley, of Ethiopian Tigray people, of Ladakhis, of Cambodians, of Chinese Opera performers, of Burmese, of Lao Akha women and many more.

Incidentally, the photograph of the wrestlers above is a Finalist entry in the Sony World Photography Awards 2014 in the Professional Sports category.

John Quintero is a freelance photographer based in London, specializing in portraiture and travel photography. Apart from assignments, he also spends part of his time traveling the world documenting remote and unique cultures and their traditional ways of life.

His work has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines including The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, National Geographic Travel UK, Photo Pro Magazine and Digital Camera Magazine. His work has also featured on a TV commercial in the UK and in several books in a number of languages. He is also a contributor to Getty for editorial and creative images, and has won numerous awards for his work.

Terri Gold | In The Mist of Time | Omo Valley

Terri Gold is an award-winning photographer and artist based in New York City, and has built an impressive reputation for her infrared imagery of rituals, rites of passage, festivals, celebrations and portraits from all over the world.

Her artistic creativity and energy were patently obvious during my Tribes of South Rajasthan & Kutch Photo~Expedition™which she had joined in January 2010, as she moved from one photo shoot in a village to the next photographing with her two cameras; one "normal" like those used by the rest of us, and the second professionally modified to shoot infrared.

She has recently returned from the endangered Omo Valley with new work...both infrared imagery and standard, and uploaded her best work using the former technique on the gallery she titled In The Midst of Time: Omo Valley. The images are really distinctive, and more fine art than travel documentary photographs as such, with the majority being set up for an aesthetic impact...or fine art imagery, if you prefer.

The Omo Valley of Ethiopia is home to eight different tribes numbering around 200,000 people in total, and their traditional way of life and culture are threatened by the Ethiopian government introducing and planning large infrastructure projects to the area, and while these will provide better medical and educational facilities, trading and many associated benefits to the tribes, there are also governmental programs aimed at forcibly resettling them.

Some conscientious travel companies have recently ceased to bring loads of tourists to the Omo Valley in an effort to pressure the Ethiopian government to cease these resettling programs. Perhaps that will also slow down the exploitation of these tribes by some tourists who view them as beautiful displays.

Terri Gold's work has been described as "interpretive in nature and incorporates the use of infrared light and the invisible light spectrum." I'm not sure how Terri photographs these days, but at one point of time she would wear up to four cameras around her neck; a digital camera, a digital camera converted to infrared, a XPan with cross-processed film (or B&W), and a Mamiya 7.

Mario Gerth | A Biblical Journey

Ancient religious sites, and rites...combined with lush monochrome photography...and you have, in my estimation, a winning combination that feeds one's visual and intellectual senses.

I'm very pleased that photographer Mario Gerth, not only follows my blog, but kindly also sent me his recent work from northern Ethiopia. He trekked more than 350 miles by foot and donkey through the Simien Mountains as well as visiting the old pilgrimage towns of Lalibela and Gondar.

Although Mario has a dedicated website (more of it later on in this post), he has a Flickr account for his wonderful monochrome photographs of his A Biblical Journey.

In the Simien Mountains, Mario encountered lives so ancient and remote that he described the scenes the Old Testament. The Semien Mountains lie in northern Ethiopia, north east of Gondar, and are a World Heritage Site. Mario met monks and deacons praying with ancient Bibles, devotees climbing hours to worship in rock-cut churches, along with farmers and shepherds whose ways of life have not changed in thousands of years.

Mario Gerth is a German travel photographer and a photojournalist who has visited 77 countries. His photographs have been sown in international exhibitions and published in various magazines. He works as a banker - part-time - in Germany and as a photographer / journalist in Africa. He traveled through Africa during the past 24 months biking from Cape Town to Cairo...as well as walking, trekking, by boat or by train.

When you get the chance to set aside enough time, I encourage you to view his main website, and in particular his Sons of the Wind category, which features gorgeous portraits of Omo Valley tribes, of tribes of Angola, of Kenya and Namibia, and of Burkina Faso.

You might also be tempted to view a short video of these portraits in an earlier blog post of Mario's work.

Alessandra Meniconzi | The Cradle of Humanity

One of my favorite travel photographers is Alessandra Meninconzi who has recently uploaded her new work from Ethiopia, which she titled The Cradle of Humanity. Her photographs were mostly made in Lalibela, and its surrounding region.

Her gallery features Ethiopian Orthodox priests, deacons and scribes who visit or reside in Lalibela, one of Ethiopia's holiest cities, and a center of pilgrimage for much of the country. It's famous for its monolithic rock-cut churches. These religious clergy are required to have knowledge of Ge’ez, the ancient liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches.

Cradle of humanity as a title for Alessandra's gallery is a little confusing, since Ethiopia is generally known as the cradle of mankind, while the cradle of humankind is a World Heritage Site first named by UNESCO in 1999, not far from Johannesburg.

Alessandra's galleries range from the Arctic Siberia to Ethiopia, from Lapland to the Silk Road, and from Greenland to Tibet and the Himalayas. She worked extensively for more than a decade in the remote areas of Asia, documenting minority people and their traditional cultures. More recently, she focused on the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions that are threatened by climate change, development, and resource extraction.

Alessandra Meniconzi is a Swiss photographer fascinated by the lives and traditions of indigenous people in remote regions of the world.Her photographs have been published widely in magazines, as well as in four books: The Silk Road (2004), Mystic Iceland (2007), Hidden China (2008) and QTI -Alessandra Meniconzi, Il coraggio di esser paesaggio (2011).

I have blogged on many occasions about Alessandra's work, and I'm glad to see she's back in full form.

France Leclerc | Nagaland

I occasionally discover travel photographers whose work (undeservedly in my view) isn't as widely known as it should be. That said, perhaps it's my own fault I wasn't aware of France Leclerc's recent photography, as it certainly deserves recognition in the world of ethno-photography.

Her blog is really worth spending time on for the quality of her photographs and the background information she provides.

As an introduction, the Seven Sister States is a name given to the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura in northeastern India. Covering about 7% of India's total area, these seven states have a population of about 45 million.

It is to some of these states, namely Assam, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh that France Leclerc recently traveled, and where she made her photographs. She also provides interesting information about the tribes she encountered in these off-the-beaten-path regions.

She also photographed some of my favorite cities in India; Varanasi, and Kolkata and its rickshaw pullers, Kumartuli and the pehlawan wrestlers, and rubbed shoulders with the sadhus at the Haridwar Kumbh Mela. Earlier, she photographed in the ancient city of Lalibela in Ethiopia, and the tribes of the Omo Valley....including the famous (or infamous) jumping of the bulls.

Based in Chicago, France describes herself as a traveler who believes that the more we learn about other cultures, the more accepting and supportive we become of them.

Jessica Antola | Ethiopia

"...what consumed me were the people - strong

and loud in dazzling technicolor..." -Jessica Antola

Ah, Ethiopia! The country which added so much to many travel photographers' portfolios with its myriad photo opportunities, its handsome people with varying physiognomies and ways of life.

Here's the Ethiopian portfolio of Jessica Antola. Born in Los Angeles, she currently lives in New York City after living and working in Paris, Portland and Rome. In her decade long photography career, she has photographed advertising campaigns for globally recognized brands, features for international magazines and three books. She also produced images portraying people, cultures and landscapes from locations including: West Papua, Antarctica, Tibet, and Myanmar.

She was featured in AFAR magazine, and if you drop by her interesting Tumblr blog, you'll see a delightful photograph of a Yali man in his traditional koteka or penis gourd in West Papua, Indonesia.

Drew Doggett | Omo Valley & Slow Road To China

Idly thumbing the pages of a society magazine aimed at the residents on Long Island, I stumbled on an article about Drew Doggett's horse photography, which mentioned that the photographer had trekked in Nepal and Ethiopia.

I visited his website which showcases a couple of Drew's galleries that are a perfect fit to feature on The Travel Photographer blog. The first gallery is Omo: Expressions of a People...which in 2012 was accepted into the Smithsonian African Art Museum’s photographic archives. These monochrome photographs are influenced by the photographer's having trained in fashion photography as an assistant to Steven Klein and Mark Seliger, and is the second of several expeditions Doggett has planned as part of a ten-year project.

Slow Road to China is a photo gallery of the inhabitants and mountains of the Humla region of northwestern Nepal. Also in black and white, these images document a disappearing Tibetan culture.

Humla is considered one of the most remote and isolated regions in Nepal, reachable only by foot or small aircrafts which irregularly land in the district head quarter, Simikot. It is situated high in the Himalaya, in the Karnali Zone bordering the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Its northern part is populated by a Tibetan ethnic group, referred to as Lama in the region.

Delphine Renou | Ethiopian Donga

"After days of car travel, I enter the territory of the Surma tribe...the small village of Turgit in the south east of Ethiopia..."

This is how Delphine Renou, a French photographer and video editor for a number of television channels (Canal Plus, Arte, etc) starts her photographic essay in southern Ethiopia where she met with members of the Surma tribe.

Her interest in photography was evidenced on her first trip in Africa as part of a humanitarian mission to Benin, after which she decides to get into photojournalism. She travels to southern Ethiopia to meet the people Surmas, to Mongolia, Vietnam, Norway and Afghanistan.

Her photographic essay with the Surma tribe focused on the donga; the Surma's stick fighting. Generally, the dongas are held so young men can find wives. The fights are held between Surma villages, and the fights have 20-30 people on each side. Many of these fights end within the first couple of hits, but can be dangerous with people dying from being hit.

Delphine wanted me to feature The Eyes of A People,. a short film of Afghanistan that she and Remy De Vlieger produced. Here it is:

The eyes of a People - AFGHANISTAN - clip from DIGITAL MILL on Vimeo.

Sam Barker | Omo Valley

The followers and readers of my blog who are fans of Omo Valley photographs will rejoice in seeing Sam Barker's gorgeous two dozen images of its tribes.

The Omo Valley has considerable resonance amongst us who've either been to the south of Ethiopia and those who want to go. It is believed that the area has been a crossroads for thousands of years as various cultures and ethnic groups migrated around the region, and it's been said that “If Africa was the mother of all humanity, then the Omo River was its main artery”. Having been there in 2004, I believe that.

The area is home to eight different tribes whose population is about 200,000 and it's been reported that the hydro-electric dam under construction on the Omo river will destroy a fragile environment and the livelihoods of these tribes, which are closely linked to the river and its annual flood.

Sam Barker began his career in photography about 15 years ago while attending the London School of Printing. His work appeared in The Telegraph, Landrover, and GQ Magazine, as well as in worldwide publishing houses and well known advertising agencies.

In between London and New York, working on commercial assignments, he continues to produce travel stories and personal projects round the globe. He is a regular contributor to the National Portrait Gallery where he has 12 portraits in the permanent collection, and has won the prestigious One Life International Photography prize.

Jan Schlegel: Pain & Beauty Redux

Oh, followers and readers of The Travel Photographer blog will like this!

Ethnophotography, traditional process, photographs made with a 4x5 field camera (Ebony SV45 Ti) on Kodak Tmax 400, and negatives developed in Kodak D76 Developer 1+1 dilution...then selenium toned. What's not to like?

"None of the people photographed wear special make-up or were specially dressed before the photos were taken. They were all captured in their own habitat — at the market, in the village square, or simply on the roadside." Jan Schlegel

Jan C. Schlegel is a German photographer, whose ethno-photographic work is in the tradition of Phil Borges. In 1998, he began traveling throughout Asia and Africa with the objective of photographing diverse people groups and tribes, and has so far traveled to 61 countries and is still in pursuit of the beauty and diversity of the nations.

The quality of these photographs are just remarkable. His website claims that he succeeds in not only creating artistic photographs, but in documenting the uniqueness of his subjects...the people who posed for him. Absolutely.

And I have a lot of respect for a photographer who doesn't follow the fad of making demeaning portraits of Ethiopian tribal people wearing ridiculous ornaments. Speaking of ornaments, take a look at the magnificent jewelry of the Himba women...and don't miss the beautiful eyes of the Kalash women.

I had posted Jan's work some years ago here, but it seems he changed his website, and added much more work.

Tribes of Omo Valley: OZZO Photography

Here's a behind the scenes video of a trip to Southern Ethiopia by Icelandic photographer Oli Haukur and other team mates who visited a number of tribes in the lower Omo Valley. The video was made with a Sony RX100, a Canon 5D Mark III and an iPhone 5, while the real behind the scenes portion is shown around half way through.

I was reminded of the brutality of the traditional whipping of Hamar women preceding the jumping of the bulls ceremony, and of the sound of the switches landing on bare flesh and at seeing the wounds and bloody welts on the backs of these women. I've written a post explaining this custom in The Whipping of the Hamar.

The lower valley of the Omo is believed to have been a crossroads for thousands of years as various cultures and ethnic groups migrated around the region. The people of the Lower Valley of the Omo include the Mursi, Suri, Karo and Hamer.

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