Returning the photographer's gaze - sometimes with a proud and knowing smile, an indignant look of resistance and mimicry, or a long studied stare as the observer becomes the observed. The gaze is returned, the observer othered. Subject owns the gaze for a frozen moment.
Young Tsemai woman with tattooed facial markings at the weekly market in Key Afer, a small multi-ethnic frontier town in the remote lower Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia. Shot near the end of a long hot dry season regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade.
The Tsemai are one of the least known ethnic groups in the valley, numbering around 5000 people concentrated in settlements along the west bank of Weito River.
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Documentary Portraiture | National Geographic | BodyArt
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Peoples of the Omo Valley
