African Visions: The Diary of an African Photographer

Rating:
Summary: This is visually beautiful, passionate and enthralling
Review: I bought this book for my daughter's 23rd birthday. Her boyfriend grew up in Kenya, in Kilifi, so I thought it would be an insightful gift. I have never been to Africa so this book provided a most wonderful journey for me. What I didn't expect was the passion and bare honesty of the author. I felt drawn into the life of Mirella Ricciardi from her early childhood days to the present. It has been a life of joy, freedom, such natural abandon.. whether throughout her own childhood or that of her children. Her photography is absolutely stunning and is the fruit of a life dedicated to capturing what most of us can only imagine. She has said goodbye to Africa but thanks to her and this wonderful book.. for me it may be just the beginning. I have bought my very own copy of this fabulous book. What more can I say? Enjoy!

Rating:
Summary: WOW!!!!
Review: Let me just say one thing: I'm completely in love with this book. It's amazing and full of breathtaking pictures that will take you right away to the very heart of Africa.

The funny thing is that I got it for a very good price as well. The best purchase of my life!

Don't miss it if you're interested in Kenya and its surroundings.

Rating:
Summary: A Personal Journey Through Africa
Review: Mirella Ricciardi is a sensitive and gifted photographer. Her work captures the essence of the (mostly east) African people she photographed. However, surprisingly, the delight of this work is not in the photographs. On first reading, I found myself skipping over the photographs to read her words - something I, a slave to the visual, simply never do.

Ricciardi recounts her life growing up in the late colonial period in Kenya. Her parent's life in post-war British East Africa is told, in brief, through the eyes of their daughter. It is in her narratives, and her captioning of her family photographs that the magic of this book emerges. Ricciardi writes with a poetic spirit, of her life and travels throughout Africa. It is an unabashedly Euro-centric view, one of sepia photos and a rose-tinted view of Colonial life. Nonetheless, it is a personal journey, and one she shares with us. Reading this book, one gets the feeling of sitting Ricciardi's sitting room, perusing her family photo albums.

Her photography shows great sensitivity, and candor, and would likely stand well on its own. Frankly, I found it to be a bit overshadowed by Ricciardi's own story. Yet, still, she has left the world a legacy - of her life, of the dying breath of British Colonialism, perhaps of the reluctant discovery that she was ever so much more European than African. It is not so much a photographic essay, as a piece of history.

Rating:
Summary: Moving Look into Africa's Fast-Disappearing Past
Review: This book contains images of modest nudity, including nursing mothers and children, that would probably earn this book an "R" rating if it were a motion picture.

Having known of Ms. Mirella Ricciardi's work as a photographer in Africa, I expected this book to be the typical photography book. What I found instead was far more interesting and rewarding. The book combines brief essays about her life in Africa with captioned photographs of her family and friends, and of the scenes she visited, studied, and photographed. Extending from a privileged childhood in what was then colonial British East Africa to recently in Kenya and neighboring nations, you see the collapse of a fantasy-like way of life, the rise of a troubled new one, vanishing wilderness, and the reflections of an intensely self-critical woman. If you are like me, you will be moved by what you see and read.

First, you will be impressed by Ms. Ricciardi's frankness. "I was a bad mother, a discontented wife and a frustrated photographer." She blames herself for the death of her older daughter, Marina, at thirty-six. "To this day, I am convinced this tragic event was my punishment." Personally, I think she is too hard on herself. Her story shows a warm heart and an eye for beauty that have enriched all those who have seen her work. I hope she finds self-forgiveness in the future.

Her mother was quite remarkable, as well. Coming from an influential and wealthy French family, she studied sculpture with Auguste Rodin and lived life as an artist in Paris before meeting the author's father, who was an exile from Italy. Relying on her mother's wealth, the couple soon set up a dream-like existence on a vast estate in Africa based in a "vast pink Italian villa" they built there near Lake Naivasha.

Ms. Ricciardi grew up with great wealth, hunting and enjoying the wilderness, and appreciating the native Africans. Later, she learned how to be a photographer while working with her future husband, and produced her well-known photographic work, Vanishing Africa. You will find many examples of that book as well as the details of how it was shot. Married to this adventuresome man, you get a sense of their time together as well as their discontent. As part of this, Ms. Ricciardi recounts her years with a young black lover, and how they handled the social challenges this presented in the class conscious society. Her two daughters were raised in an unself-conscious way with African children, often cavorting together nude as many young children do. You will enjoy seeing these scenes of carefree youth. Ms. Ricciardi's love of nature is matched by her love of the African people, and you will especially enjoy her images of the Maasai.

Moving forward in time, you see photographs of white Kenyans who fought the Mau-Mau, farmed and studied wildlife, the destruction that war brought to Africans, and the retreating wilderness. I especially enjoyed her profiles of people who have found a continued life in Africa whose family roots go back to colonial days. Ms. Caroline Roumegeure was especially interesting to me, with her background as the daughter of a Maasai warrior and a French woman in a family with 6 wives and 26 other children. She seemed to blend the best of both cultures together. Ms. Ricciardi eventually became estranged from Africa and has left it.

The photography captures breath-taking beauty that will stun you with its mystical appeal. You will feel like you are looking at something that is beyond your own understanding, but which will beckon you forward. Ms. Ricciardi's openness to the people, land, and animals will become your own, and you will be the better for it.

After you finish contemplating this deep and self-critical view of another way of life, I suggest that you think about where you are divided from other people and nature in your community. How can you reach out to bridge the gaps in a loving way?

Share your love with all around!

Rating:
Summary: Looking through Mirella Ricciardi's Eyes
Review: This is something of a 'summing it all up' book for this photographer of Africa. With four books and an entire lifetime behind her, she is looking back over the path of her days and trying to clarify for herself what her relationship with the land of her birth has become. "I am a child of Africa," she begins by saying, and yet as we wander through the pages of her life it is clear that it is never so simple as that.

The journey that Ricciardi takes us on is made up of long passages of text and an equal abundance of beautiful photographs. This was my first introduction to this talented photographer, and some of her work took my breath away. The photographs each have descriptions and comments written along side them, and I ended up reading these before working through the sections of text.

Ricciardi's life has been vibrant and is fascinating to read about, though her tone is somewhat melancholy. She is looking back on the Africa that was, the Africa of her youth that has disappeared. She is also looking at it through her 'white man's eyes', and realizing that although she may be rooted in the land she has always been a foreigner.

The photographs moved me and Ricciardi's words challenged me. As a white woman who loved Africa she has in interesting view point, caught between what her people have done to Africa and what Africa has done for her. Sorrow and pain and regret are unavoidable when it comes to the Africa of today, but they are bound up with incredible beauty. This book doesn't so much show us the heart of Africa, but the heart of a woman who has been effected forever by the two faces of this land.

Although Ricciardi writes eloquently about Africa and shares herself and her deepest thoughts with the reader in a personal, searching way, it is her photographs that tell her story best. She has captured both the last days of the Africa she knew and the beginning of its new life, in this collection of some of her best and favorite work. A beautiful book.

Rating:
Summary: Looking through Mirella Ricciardi's Eyes
Review: This is something of a `summing it all up' book for this photographer of Africa. With four books and an entire lifetime behind her, she is looking back over the path of her days and trying to clarify for herself what her relationship with the land of her birth has become. "I am a child of Africa," she begins by saying, and yet as we wander through the pages of her life it is clear that it is never so simple as that.

The journey that Ricciardi takes us on is made up of long passages of text and an equal abundance of beautiful photographs. This was my first introduction to this talented photographer, and some of her work took my breath away. The photographs each have descriptions and comments written along side them, and I ended up reading these before working through the sections of text.

Ricciardi's life has been vibrant and is fascinating to read about, though her tone is somewhat melancholy. She is looking back on the Africa that was, the Africa of her youth that has disappeared. She is also looking at it through her `white man's eyes', and realizing that although she may be rooted in the land she has always been a foreigner.

The photographs moved me and Ricciardi's words challenged me. As a white woman who loved Africa she has in interesting view point, caught between what her people have done to Africa and what Africa has done for her. Sorrow and pain and regret are unavoidable when it comes to the Africa of today, but they are bound up with incredible beauty. This book doesn't so much show us the heart of Africa, but the heart of a woman who has been effected forever by the two faces of this land.

Although Ricciardi writes eloquently about Africa and shares herself and her deepest thoughts with the reader in a personal, searching way, it is her photographs that tell her story best. She has captured both the last days of the Africa she knew and the beginning of its new life, in this collection of some of her best and favorite work. A beautiful book.

Rating:
Summary: In one word: Wonderful!
Review: This was bought as a gift, my dear friend who is also my mom had this on her wish list and I bought it for her birthday.
I didn't really know what to expect of the book, since it was not I who wished for it.
When it came, I was completely delighted with it. Not only is it a beautiful, big, coffee-table size volume, but the photographs inside are wonderful! Something else--the text of the book is written in a font that appears to have been written by hand, straight out of the explorers journal. A nice touch when accompanied by these wonderful photos.
A beautiful book, indeed and the price is very fair, in my opinion.

It makes a great gift, too! :-)