Two Women With Vision Take On a Continent

Many stories rise from Africa’s soil, but only a few travel beyond its shores. Once it was the exploits of adventurers and explorers that captured imaginations in Europe and America; today tales of conflict and horror make the headlines.

Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have made it their mission to tell the stories that often go untold outside the continent--stories of African lives, of an almost infinitely intricate complex of cultures and traditions whose roots stretch back untold centuries.

With their cameras, the pair have traversed Africa for more than 20 years, first individually and then as a team, documenting a mosaic of peoples and customs stretching from the Swazi reed dance in South Africa to an Imilchil bride market in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

The two have between them published four books and numerous magazine articles--National Geographic featured their work in a cover story in October--on the people of Africa.

“We’ve always wanted to tell the stories behind the news headlines, the stories that go way beyond contemporary political upheaval,” Beckwith said in a telephone interview from Washington.

“The modern stories are very important, but ours is a more ancient story.”

Beckwith and Fisher will share some of those stories and their recent work this weekend at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, where they will appear as part of the Art of Adorning, a three-day festival opening Friday.

In addition to festival events, the museum will offer for sale jewelry made by Fisher (incorporating elements created by African craftspeople) as well as jewelry made by Wodaabe nomads of Niger and sold through a cooperative started by the photographers.

In two public lectures, Beckwith and Fisher will give a preview of a project that is their most ambitious yet.

By the time it is complete in 1999, “African Ceremonies” will encompass a large-format book of photography, a touring exhibition, a documentary film and an educational CD-ROM. Seven years in the making, the project has produced a staggering 90,000 images. The London-based photographers are on the road in Africa an average of seven months out of the year.

All manner of ritual falls within their purview, from birth to death, including courtship, rites of passage into adulthood, religious ceremonies, rituals tied to migration and the rites of African royalty. They have photographed the Dogon Dama burial ceremony in Mali, a six-week-long communal funeral that takes place only every 12 years, and the silver jubilee of the Ashanti king in Ghana--a procession of 150 chiefs and all of their retinues.

“We realized that rituals were some of the most powerful aspects of people’s lives,” said Beckwith, explaining the genesis of the project. “Rituals bring people meaning and bring value to their lives.”

There is a lesson in these images that transcends the thrill of peering at exotic cultures, the photographers argue. “The modern world is missing things that make a life cohesive,” Fisher said. “We all have things to learn from traditional cultures.”

Another aspect of the project is a more poignant one: The Africa that Beckwith and Fisher are photographing is one that is changing rapidly and, in some cases, disappearing.

Cultures, even “traditional” ones, are flexible and ever-evolving. But processes begun with European colonialism, such as urbanization and the influx of Western culture, have combined with political and population pressures to alter African societies in ever-accelerating ways.

“We have photographed ceremonies and cultures that no longer exist,” Beckwith said.

Preserving a record of these ceremonies and cultures before they disappear is one of their primary aims. “If one doesn’t record Africa now, it won’t really be there to record,” Fisher says.

Undertaking “African Ceremonies”--which will include 26 ceremonies in 22 countries--is only possible because of what the photographers have learned and the many contacts they have made over the years.

The U.S.-born Beckwith published her first book on Africa, “Maasai,” (Harry Abrams Inc.) in 1980 after spending two years with the Kenyan tribe. Later she studied Wodaabe traditions with Belgian anthropologist Marion van Offelen, and together they published “Nomads of Niger” (Abrams) in 1983.

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Fisher, an Australian social science graduate, went to Kenya in 1970 and became fascinated with African jewelry and body decoration--an interest that culminated in 1984 with the publication of “Africa Adorned,” (Abrams) an award-winning book of photographs that entailed seven years of fieldwork and 30,000 miles of travel.

Beckwith and Fisher met in 1979 and undertook their first joint project in 1985, traveling throughout the Horn of Africa--Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti and northern Kenya--for five years to produce “African Ark” (Abrams) published in 1990.

The women sometimes travel with a translator, sometimes with a driver, but prefer to enter the cultures they visit on their own. Sometimes that is a necessity, as with the Wodaabe nomads. “They’re sort of like birds in the bush; they just scatter when strangers approach,” Beckwith said. “Having a translator would be an intrusion.”

Their goal is, as much as possible, immersion in the societies they photograph. “We both believe that we want to look at societies as if we’re looking at them as members of the societies,” Beckwith said. “We want to become invisible; we want to be sort of flies on the wall. . . . We want to lose our Western selves when we go to Africa.”

The isolation of some of the groups can make travel an ordeal. To reach the Surma, a society in southwestern Ethiopia, the pair had to travel by light plane, then via a team of mules (to carry food, water and photographic gear) for four days over 10,000-foot mountain passes.

When they arrived among the Surma, with whom language was a formidable barrier, Fisher and Beckwith strove to be as unobtrusive as possible. “It was just an experience where you put yourself in their hands, entirely,” Fisher said. “We’re not pushing; we’re just waiting to be invited.”

Their gender, Beckwith and Fisher believe, is more often an aid than a hindrance. They are less threatening to both men and women--the men, in fact, are often quite protective, they say. They are allowed to witness and photograph women’s ceremonies and, as outsiders, they are often allowed to attend men’s ceremonies that are closed to women of the society.

Sometimes, at the urging of local women, they will dress as the locals do--and then find that their free-roaming privileges as outsiders are suddenly curtailed. “We found [in such cases] that the only way to photograph the men was to put on our Banana Republic khakis and become genderless again,” Beckwith jokes.

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Both women said that the goal is to build a relationship of trust and mutual respect--and then to honor that trust once they have taken their photographs and moved on.

To that end, Beckwith and Fisher have used portions of their royalties for such projects as building wells, establishing a Masai primary school and helping to administer a cooperative for the Wodaabe to sell their jewelry.

They also send copies of their books back into Africa, so that the people they document have a record of their own. “We try to help in all ways that we can think of,” Fisher said. “When we leave, we want them to know that we’ve cared.”

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‘Art of Adorning’ Events

Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher will be at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana this weekend as part of the museum’s annual Art of Adorning festival.

FRIDAY

* 7:30 p.m. Fisher-Beckwith lecture ($10 general, $7.50 for museum members).

* 8:30 Book signing.

SATURDAY

* 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Courtyard activities and Beads and Beyond Bazaar (free).

* 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Informal fashion show (free).

* 2-4 p.m. Book signing with Beckwith and Fisher (free).

SUNDAY

* 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Courtyard activities and Beads and Beyond Bazaar (free).

* 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Informal fashion show (free).

* 2-4 p.m. Lecture and book signing with Beckwith and Fisher ($10 general, $7.50 for museum members).

The Bowers Museum is at 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana. Museum admission for ongoing exhibits is $6 for adults, $4 for seniors and students and $2 for children 5-12. (714) 567-3600.

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Beckwith and Fisher will make appearances in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills next week.

* April 10. Reception from 5:30 to 9 p.m., with lecture at 7 p.m. at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre, 743 S. Lucerne Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 938-2826. Free; reservations recommended.

* April 11. Lecture and book signing beginning at 7 p.m. at the Beverly Hills Library, 444 N. Rexford Drive. (310) 285-2438. Free; reservations recommended.