Africa’s earthen splendor

BRITISH photographer James Morris felt compelled to document butabu, the water-and-earth architecture of Western Africa, because too often when people think of traditional African buildings “they perceive nothing more than a mud hut from an old Tarzan film.” Instead, Morris found elaborate, fantastical forms that he believes may have informed the work of Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. “The material is tactile, warm and vulnerable,” Morris wrote in a 2004 essay. “Change and movement are ever present. Their uniqueness is in their muddiness.”

The structures, Morris wrote, are fragile, vulnerable to harsh weather conditions and well-meaning preservationists who try to render them in cement, hardening their melting lines. But the earthen architecture is preserved in its natural state in “Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa,” an exhibition of 50 large-scale photographs including mosques, private homes, royal residences and other structures on view at the Fowler Museum at UCLA next Sunday through July 15.

Said the photographer via e-mail: “This is the Sahel region. To the north is the Sahara, where there is no water to sustain life or make mud buildings. To the south is the tropics, where it rains too much and mud buildings have to have thatched roofs. So this is a unique area with unique architectural traditions.”

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-- Diane Haithman