Mursi pastoral settlement situated near the banks of the Mago River, a tributary that joins the essential Omo River in a remote corner of southwestern Ethiopia. Shot directly under the noonday sun near the end of a long hot dry season regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade. Adorned with a wild boar's tusk, facial chalk markings, decorated goat-skin clothing, and an ornamental clay lip-plate.
The Mursi are one of the last groups in Africa where women still wear large wooden or clay plates in their lower lips. Most Mursi women wear lip-plates as an aesthetic symbol of cultural pride and identity, signifying passage to womanhood/adulthood. The labrets are worn more frequently by unmarried or newly wed women and are generally worn when serving men food or during important ritual events, i.e., weddings, men's stick-duelling competitions, communal dances, safari photo-ops.
The Mursi are semi-nomadic farmers and herders who depend on shifting hoe-cultivation (mostly drought-resistant varieties of sorghum) and cattle herding for their livelihood. They number less than ten thousand today.
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Peoples of the Omo Valley | Documentary Portraiture | BodyArt
