Balinese duck tender with traditional wide-brim rain hat under an early monsoon drizzle - returning from the paddy fields along a path through the original Monkey Forest near Padang Tegal Village, Ubud, Bali.

Digital slide scan, shot with an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic (SMC Pentax Zoom 45~125mm f/4) - before modernization and the onslaught of mass tourism that now compromise much of Ubud's original charm, circa 1972. expl#32

© All rights to reserved

Rethinking Portraiture | Social Documentary | Lonely Planet

The Power of Documentary Portraiture - Flickr Gallery

Tags:   Bali duck tender herder Monkey Forest Padang Tegal Ubud Indonesia Southeast Asia rain monsoon lush green wet-season people DavidSchweitzer DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism explore Portrait street film analog asia indigenous Faces travel outdoor DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait

© All Rights Reserved

© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved. Any use of this work requires my prior written permission.

"To possess the world in the form of images is, precisely, to re-experience the unreality and remoteness of the the real." Susan Sontag, On Photography

Adorned with a wild boar's tusk, facial chalk markings, decorated goat-skin clothing and an ornamental clay lip-plate. Shot at a communal dance in a Mursi semi-nomadic pastoral settlement on the bank of the Mago River, a tributary that joins the essential Omo River in a remote corner of southwestern Ethiopia.

On the meaning of lip-plates in Mursi culture and society
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. They are more frequently worn by unmarried or newly wed women and are generally worn when serving men food or during important ritual events (weddings, men's duelling competitions, communal dances, safari photo-ops).

Debunking popular myths
Contrary to popular opinion among travellers and other passing strangers, ethnographers found little or no connection between the size of a woman’s lip-plate and the size of her bridewealth (cattle, guns).

Anthropologists and ethnographers have debunked another popular myth surrounding the lip-plate in this region. They found no evidence that the labret originated as a deliberate attempt to disfigure and make women less attractive to slave traders, yet this myth seems to surface regularly in accounts by professional and amateur photographers, tourists, and bloggers alike.

The Mursi and Mursiland
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.

Most Mursi live in small settlements dispersed across Mursiland, a remote territory of about thirty by eighty kilometres between the Omo and Mago Rivers in southwestern Ethiopia, near the border with South Sudan and northern Kenya.

The terrain varies from a volcanic plain dominated by a range of hills and a major watershed to a riverine forest, wooded grasslands and thorny bushland thickets. The climate is harsh and unstable with low rainfall and daily temperatures regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade during the dry season.

Cogent ethnographic accounts on the meaning of lip-plates in Mursi culture and society include:
• David Turton, "Lip plates and the people who take photographs: uneasy encounters between Mursi and tourists in southern Ethiopia", Anthropology Today, 20:3, 3-8, 2004.
• Shauna Latosky, "Reflections on the lip-plates of Mursi women as a source of stigma and self-esteem", in Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall (eds.) The perils of face: Essays on cultural contact, respect and self-esteem in southern Ethiopia, Mainzer Beiträge zur Afrika-Forschung, Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2006, pp. 371-386.

Documentary Portraiture | National Geographic | BodyArt

Flickr Gallery: The Power of Documentary Portraiture

Peoples of the Omo Valley

Tags:   Mursi mother labret lip-plate lip-disc lip-plug BodyArt body piercing body modification Ethiopia Omo Faces Africa indigenous ethnic tribe people Afrique African jewellery davidschweitzer aesthetics portrait documentary VanishingCultures human interest DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait Street bestportraitsaoi

© All Rights Reserved

© National Geographic Yourshot (Editor's Favourite with Editor's Note, July 2018). Story and assignment: “Not Just a Face.”

~
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.

A proud Maasai herder (warrior age-set) vogued this pose near the crater rim in the Ngorongoro Highlands of northern Tanzania. Elegantly adorned with glass-beaded necklaces, medallion and wrist band; an amber bracelet; stretched earlobes with glass-beaded sleeves and copper pendants.

High resolution Noritsu Koki QSS digital film scan, shot with a compact semi-automatic Pentax point-and-shoot film camera (38~105mm AF), circa 1997. expl#46

Documentary Portraiture | Personal Faves | National Geographic

Flickr Gallery: The Power of Documentary Portraiture

Tags:   Maasai herder warrior proud elegant Ngorongoro Highlands Tanzania Rift Valley cattle camp cattle beadwork afrique africa portrait man tribal culture tradition pastoral nomadic tribe ethnic people indigenous jewelry glass-beaded collar copper pendants Red explore DavidSchweitzer DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism DocumentaryPortrait

© All Rights Reserved

Maasai herders (warrior age-set) on a shortcut traverse across the crest of the Ngorongoro Crater Rim in northern Tanzania, East Africa. Digital film scan, shot with a semi-automatic Pentax pocket camera (38~105mm AF), circa 1997. expl#74

© All rights reserved .

Rethinking Portraiture | Social Documentary | National Geographic

Tags:   Maasai herders warrior Ngorongoro Crater Tanzania tribe nomad Africa people indigenous highlands Photojournalism streetphotography documentaryphotography DavidSchweitzer HumanInterest VisualAnthropology film analog elitegalleryaoi bestcapturesaoi aoi art

© All Rights Reserved

Young Kara men (warrior age-group) prepare for an early-evening communal dance in a small settlement (Korcho) set high on the fertile east bank of southern Ethiopia's lower Omo River. Adorned with finger-painted white-chalk body markings, glass-bead necklaces, and clay hair buns with ostrich feathers.

The essential life-sustaining Omo River is situated (out of sight) below the edge of a steep riverbank in the backdrop. The Nyangatom (past enemies, current allies) are established on other side of the river. The river carves a hard winding course south through the volcanic-rock floor of the Great Rift Valley for another 50-60 kilometres before pouring into Lake Turkana at the border with Kenya.

© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved. expl#27

.Peoples of the Omo Valley


Documentary Portraiture | National Geographic | BodyArt

Tags:   kara indigenous africa warrior tribe tradition portrait people pastoral omo nomadic lip-disc lip-plug hairbun ethnic ethiopia body custom documentary karo earrings bodyart faces jewelry bodypainting DavidSchweitzer DocumentaryPhotography StreetPhotography HumanInterest VisualAnthropology PhotoJournalism DocumentaryPortrait StreetPortrait VanishingCultures dancers culture art YBS24Portrait

© All Rights Reserved