Close Encounters

Photography is neither a generous mistress nor an honest master, and photographers who apply the creativity of art to the medium of reportage carry a heavy burden of responsibility. Especially in Africa. The camera seduces but rarely delivers more than a souvenir of the passing moment. Few photographs transcend the mere craft of their production in the way that a painting, an etching or a sketch can offer such enduring satisfaction that it deserves to hang on the wall, where the innate spark of a vision skillfully expressed will be encountered anew, time and time again. The value--even the validity--of a photograph is determined by its subject matter. Photography is first and foremost a recording medium, with a reputation for producing accurate representations of reality. Photographs fulfill their function best when widely disseminated, most especially in newspapers, magazines and books, and this is where dishonesty creeps in. For no selection or layout of photographs is divorced entirely from a consideration of what a prospective audience would like to see.

For many--Westerners in particular--first encounters with the landscapes and people of Africa are soul-awakening experiences that transport them beyond vacation-like delight toward a new understanding of the word recreation: re-creation. This, after all, is where the human line began. Our physical abilities and cerebral activities were evolutionary responses to the imperatives of life in African environments. The technological talents that will take us to the stars began with the manufacture of stone tools by human ancestors in East Africa 2 1/2 million years ago.

The African continent exudes a sense of timeless order, and the susceptible will succumb to the pull of a binding affinity before they can even kick its red dirt from their boots. Africa changes people. The trouble is that in doing so, Africa is condemned to remain the same. Those whom Africa changes become advocates for the preservation of that which has changed them; and in the process they become prime targets for the stream of media output that constantly reinforces Western perceptions of Africa as wildlife park and anthropological museum (not to mention famine- and battlefield). And I write from experience, photography and Africa having been central and mutually supporting aspects of my own life (both professional and domestic) for more than 40 years.

In an introduction to the magnificent “African Ceremonies,” Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher declare that they approached this project “not as anthropologists but as artists, following [their] creative spirits.” They wanted to create “a visual exploration of the meaning and power of traditional rituals and ceremonies in Africa before they disappear forever.” This was a huge undertaking, and it would be churlish to offer any but the most wholehearted congratulations for what they have achieved. “African Ceremonies” is a monument to the successful collaboration of photographers, researchers, designers, publishers and printers. Two volumes. Seven hundred forty-four pages. Eight hundred fifty photographs. Forty-three ceremonies in 26 countries commemorating birth and death, initiation, courtship and marriage; seasonal rites, beliefs and worship; royalty, power, spirits and ancestors.

There is much here that should be admired: the gorgeous colors of the Yoruba Egungun masquerade in Nigeria, the sensational gold regalia of the Ashanti court in Ghana, the fantastic voodoo rites of Togo and the stunning Fulani cattle crossing of the Niger River. But spend a few days with the books and another, more critical adjective demands attention: extravagant. Isn’t this all a bit over the top?

The excesses run in several directions. Not least in terms of physical proportions (with a 14- by 10-inch page size, it weighs in at 15 1/2 pounds; prospective buyers should first make sure their coffee tables can take the strain) and certainly in the book’s superfluous repetition of certain images, but most especially in the liberties that have been taken with the dignity of some of the people photographed. This is an ethical issue, and therefore tricky to deal with, but photographers pursuing their creative spirit into the realm of reportage should be mindful of the context in which their work will be viewed when deciding what to include in a book. Photographs of Jewish circumcision procedures would not be out of place in a medical journal, for instance, but the intimate coverage of Masai (in Tanzania) and Taneka (in Benin) male circumcision procedures in “African Ceremonies” verges on the voyeuristic and categorizes the book as a work that will feed expectations of Africa as an exotic other world. The full-page picture of a Taneka initiate’s naked groin, with his penis wrapped in bright green banana leaf and tied round with raffia, for instance, is an image the artist may be proud of: a great picture, but gratuitous and superficial without the further information that honest reportage demands. The caption reveals only that the sheath will remain in place for three months, during which time the initiate must not engage in sexual activity or plant crops.

Female circumcision is covered too, with a good available light close-up of the girl screaming in agony and a technically less satisfactory flash shot of the scene inside the hut. Here we see the girl held down by no fewer than five women (all grinning broadly for the camera), her legs spread apart as the circumciser does her work. One turns to the text for our stalwart female authors’ opinions of this cruel mutilation: “We understand that it is important for the Masai to maintain this age-old rite of passage into womanhood,” they write, because youngsters who undergo “the agony of such an ordeal with courage will be able to endure the challenges of life and uphold the proud reputation of the Masai people.” On another page they express the hope “that the ritual could be modified so that it reflected the gentle and nurturing nature of the Masai people” but offer no suggestion as to how this could be achieved. Read a little farther and you find that girls are circumcised when they first menstruate. Prior to that, between the ages of 9 and 13, they are available as sexual partners for the community’s unmarried men, who are forbidden to have sex with circumcised women until they marry, usually in their late 20s or early 30s. Sex with pre-pubescent girls accommodates the sexual drive of young men while avoiding pregnancy out of wedlock, which is strictly taboo in Masai society, we are told. Reading that gives the doleful expression of the beautiful young Masai girl on the slip case cover a new depth of meaning.

But at least we are spared the dark side of the Emir’s court in northern Nigeria, whose ceremonies occupy 20 pages of Volume 1. Not a woman in sight here. But then the colorfully robed men and their richly caparisoned and prancing horses are so much more accessible than the extreme circumcision rites, by which women acquire social acceptance in this strict Islamic Hausa community, to which even the redoubtable Beckwith and Fisher might have failed to gain access. But I am sure aid workers could have directed them to many examples of infibulation gone wrong (infibulation involves the excision of the clitoris, the labia minora and the front part of the labia majora, after which the two sides of the vulva are sewn together and the girl kept immobile on her back until the wound is healed; to be opened again only by her husband’s forced entry on her wedding night, which generally involves tearing and pain).

Of course it could be said that dramatic pictures of female circumcision will increase awareness of the barbarous practice and lend support to campaigns for it to be outlawed. Maybe so, but the point is easily missed in the pages of this lavish $150 book. And if Beckwith and Fisher’s coverage of Africans being circumcised is questionable, what are we to make of their photographs of the mentally ill? One of the most striking pictures in the book is a shot of three mentally ill Himba women on their hands and knees, living out their belief that they are possessed by the spirit of the lion that killed their husband. They are behaving like lions, and with the dust swirling from their frenzied movements they indeed look like lions, ochred ringlets hanging over their ears, hooded eyes and teeth like fangs. The caption reads: “Three women are possessed by the spirit of a lion sent to them by their deceased husband. Killed by a lion himself, he has dispatched the spirit to bring his wives to join him in the afterworld. Surrounded by chanting healers, the possessed women display all the savagery of the lion spirit that has taken hold of them. Roaring, growling, and lashing out with their ‘claws,’ they crawl around on all fours for several hours, unaware that their knees are cut and bleeding.”

This is a sensational picture, which from an editorial point of view demands nothing less than a double-page spread. From a human point of view, however, the picture is deeply insensitive. Doubtless there are institutions in the United States where demented people behave like lions; but we are unlikely to see dramatic photographs of them in a book on American ceremonies. But Africa is different, popular opinion insists.

“Africans . . . are not born into an easy relationship with the cosmos,” the authors explain. “From birth to death, they must tend it constantly.” Thus the Himba believe that all sickness and even dementia result from either a curse or a premature call from the ancestors, brought to them on the wings of a black dove. Throughout the continent, talismans protect against illnesses that a course of modern medicine could readily cure. Chickens and goats are sacrificed to ward off the effects of natural phenomena that are beyond human intervention, such as drought. In the Sudan, Dinka women believe that wearing cowrie shells (the “money” brought from the Maldive Islands with which slave traders bought the human cargoes they shipped across the Atlantic) will help them to conceive. Masks are paraded as symbols of purity, honesty and justice. Among the Ga on the coast of Ghana, fantasy coffins transport the dead to the afterworld--in the shape of a Mercedes-Benz for a wealthy merchant, a lobster for a fisherman.

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The numerous instances of ritualized belief photographed by Beckwith and Fisher, though integral to the work, also illustrate the vast gulf that exists between Africa and the West. Beliefs feature little in our lives because we are bolstered by so much material certainty. We take our standard of living for granted, and with it we assume the right to ogle at the way less materially endowed people deal with the uncertainties of their lives. But we are all human; we know that only accidents of birth separate us.

In every society, throughout human history, beliefs define the voids that knowledge cannot yet fill. Tradition and ritual are the functional strategies that have evolved to ensure the persistence of practices that are essential to the maintenance of particular ways of life. They demonstrate humanity’s amazing capacity to innovate and adapt to a world in which change is the only long-term certainty. People are full of ideas. The strategies they develop persist as long as they function satisfactorily and fade away when they do not. To venerate tradition and ritual belief for its spectacle alone, as “African Ceremonies” invites us to do, is like trying to catch a flowing stream; and though it reflects, still water does not sparkle. Of course, a photograph can catch the sparkling moment, as Beckwith and Fisher repeatedly demonstrate, but their extraordinary piece of work remains firmly committed to the popular image of Africa as wildlife park and anthropological museum.