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Summary: See it before it disappears
Review: A beautiful look at cultural conventions that may soon be relegated to the quaint and unusual.
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Summary: As brilliant as Saharan sunlight
Review: Beckwith and Fisher exceed their prior masterpieces with thistwo-volume collection of photographs and descriptions of traditionalceremonies. The diversity of settings, the splendor of styles and smiles, and the care and reverence they bring to this work speaks to their respect and faithfulness to the quest. The text is as clear as the customs are intriguing. The photographs capture the breadth of scenes and go to the details. This is not the work of dilettantes or voyeurs, nor is it an exercise of academic minutiae, sensational reporting, or sentimental travel writing. AFRICAN CEREMONIES has been born of the drive in the human race to celebrate life and mystery, the wisdom of elders and officials who have granted access to private domains in a number of nations, and the hard work and devotion of two extraordinary women who have paid their dues in the field for decades. There is something still missing, however, in their publishing odyssey. One can hope that they are hard at work on a volume to crown the splendor of their last six--a celebration of life in everyday terms. Who are better prepared to assemble visual albums of villages where there are no K-Marts? From cotton boll to blanket, palm nut to fragrant oil, log to canoe, their keen and practiced eyes can show us the process of lives much like our recent ancestors lived when they too cooked over open fires and chased birds from the fields before harvest.
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Summary: Buy it for what it is
Review: Buyers should understand what this is - a beautiful coffee table book. Beckwith and Fisher present their usual quality of brilliant, sensitive photography. But understand that this is, for the most part, capturing a memory, a fantasy. This Africa no longer exists. Don't buy the book to learn African culture. Buy it if you like photography. As a historical record, it's lacking. One can capture a visual from the outside, but one cannot capture a cultural understanding as readily.
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Summary: From the November 12, 1999 NPR Morning Edition Interview
Review: Excerpts from Alex Chadwick's(NPR Reporter)interview with African Ceremonies authors, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fischer: "In a way that you can be an evangelist or in love or a dreamer, be something by your heart. They're Africa."--Alex Chadwick "There is so much that's come as an inspiration from that continent, I think it's the richness of the continent that we've been able to portray in the book, and if you take ceremonies, you're actually personalizing the richness. We're not just looking at a book of African art. We're looking at a book of Africans and their art."--Angela Fischer "Sometimes people see that there's only one way to live; in fact, there are hundreds of ways to live, hundreds of ways to believe. There are many ways to get married, many ways to become a man, many ways to become a woman. And it's a marvelous acceptance that we would like to give to the world."--Carol Beckwith
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Summary: BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
Review: HOW CAN ANYONE SAY THAT THESE CULTURES DON'T EXIST ANYMORE, OR THIS IS AN AFRICA THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. THEY TOOK THESE PICTURES WITHIN THE LAST 10 YEARS.. DIDN'T THEY ? DUH ? EVERYONE KNOWS THERE IS A COMMON EVERYDAY AFRICA.. GOING TO WORK GENERAL LIVING ( JUST LIKE US HERE IN AMERICA FOLKS) BUT STILL THERE IS AFRICAN TRIBAL SPLENDOR. JUST LIKE IN AMERICA INDIAN'S GET TOGETHER FOR TRIBAL POW WOWS. THEY STILL EXIST TOO. THE PICTURES IN THIS BOOK ARE SHOCKINGLY GORGEOUS...AFRICAN PEOPLE STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL. PLEASE! THE MEN ARE HANDSOME, THE WOMEN WONDEROUS. IT JUST MAKES ME WONDER WHY THE EUROPEAN STANDARD, HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE "STANDARD" OF BEAUTY. THIS REVUE MAY SOUND SHALLOW, BUT IF YOUR INTO THE HUMAN HAS ART FORM ...BUY THIS BOOK!!
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Summary: BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE
Review: HOW CAN ANYONE SAY THAT THESE CULTURES DON'T EXIST ANYMORE, OR THIS IS AN AFRICA THAT NO LONGER EXISTS. THEY TOOK THESE PICTURES WITHIN THE LAST 10 YEARS.. DIDN'T THEY ? DUH ? EVERYONE KNOWS THERE IS A COMMON EVERYDAY AFRICA.. GOING TO WORK GENERAL LIVING ( JUST LIKE US HERE IN AMERICA FOLKS) BUT STILL THERE IS AFRICAN TRIBAL SPLENDOR. JUST LIKE IN AMERICA INDIAN'S GET TOGETHER FOR TRIBAL POW WOWS. THEY STILL EXIST TOO. THE PICTURES IN THIS BOOK ARE SHOCKINGLY GORGEOUS...AFRICAN PEOPLE STUNNINGLY BEAUTIFUL. PLEASE! THE MEN ARE HANDSOME, THE WOMEN WONDEROUS. IT JUST MAKES ME WONDER WHY THE EUROPEAN STANDARD, HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE "STANDARD" OF BEAUTY. THIS REVUE MAY SOUND SHALLOW, BUT IF YOUR INTO THE HUMAN HAS ART FORM ...BUY THIS BOOK!!
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Summary: The books that capture you
Review: I purchased this book (it's actually a two volume set) about a year ago and it still fascinates me. It sits underneath a glass coffee table in our living room. When company visits, invariably, someone picks it up and starts going through it, at that point they are "no longer there". It happens everytime, once you start, it becomes very difficult to put the book down. You tell yourself "I'll just look at one more page" but the photos are superbly done as well as the narration. WONDERFUL!
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Summary: The books that capture you
Review: I purchased this book (it's actually a two volume set) about a year ago and it still fascinates me. It sits underneath a glass coffee table in our living room. When company visits, invariably, someone picks it up and starts going through it, at that point they are "no longer there". It happens everytime, once you start, it becomes very difficult to put the book down. You tell yourself "I'll just look at one more page" but the photos are superbly done as well as the narration. WONDERFUL!
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Summary: African Ceremonies (Beckwith and Fisher)
Review: I received African Ceremonies as a birthday present two months ago and soon began to read the book carefully since the photographs beg you to listen to the stories they tell about people, their lives, their aspirations and their ceremonies. For centuries Africa was a continent of massive migrations and vibrant cultures. All had their high time, declined in the normal course of events and left a legacy for their successors. Yet most ceremonies, although embellished and refined over time, remained largely the same. The hypnotic photograph of the Voodoo dancer from Ghana on the front of the slip case, for example, speaks of a time of spirits, oracles and divinations. Of soothsayers and intermediaries between man and the higher powers as well as of the unshakable belief that intervention is needed to protect man from evil, to solve his troubles, to cure his illnesses and generally to secure good fortune. And the Berber bride in her bejeweled headdress and cloak on the spine of the book reminds us that not all Africans are of black skin colour and that depending on what coast of Africa one finds oneself on, influences from out of Africa have helped to create new Africans. And with them ceremonies. Beckwith and Fisher have been photographing Africa for over thirty years, and like a ripe savoury wine African Ceremonies was many years in the making. With the expert collaboration of writers and designers each volume now contains three sections: Birth and Initiation; Courtship and Marriage; Royalty and Power in Volume 1; and Seasonal Rites; Beliefs and Worship; Spirits and Ancestors in Volume 2. The Dagara shaman Malidoma Patrice Som‚ from Burkina Faso, a special friend and guide to the photographers, sets the tone in his Foreword by saying that Beckwith and Fisher's travails are really a labour of love for Africa and that the two women responded "to an urgent call from the continent's ancestors to record sacred ceremonies before it is too late." And record they did: the two volumes contain over 700 pages and hundreds of exquisite colour photographs showing 43 ceremonies in 26 countries. Birth, childhood, initiation, marriage and death are fateful events in an African's life. The first photograph in African Childhood of a Surma father in Ethiopia surrounded by five children with their bodies painted has universal appeal as do those of ochred Himba children in Namibia and young Krobo girls draped in their beautiful cloths from Ghana. The initiation ceremonies and practices leading a young boy or girl from childhood to adulthood are elaborate, and while they are sometimes difficult for us to look at they have nevertheless been part of African life for time immemorial. The rituals of the Taneka initiation in northern Benin, of Ndebele womanhood in South Africa or Maasai warriorhood in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya and Tanzania are deeply rooted in the land and its people. Glistening with red ochre body paint and adorned with various implements, marching one behind the other across the arid savannah, the page literally palpitates with the excitement and eagerness of these young Maasai boys to at last become adults. The photographs of a Tuareg wedding deep in the Saharan desert pulsate with a life unknown to the viewer. Descended from the ancient Berbers of North Africa who fought and then mingled with invading Arabs centuries ago, the two-page photograph of guests arriving in their finery on their camels from across the arid land is a breathtaking symphony of colours any contemporary fashion designer would love to create. The beautiful photographs of African Brides later in the book are a reminder that, whatever one's culture, a wedding day is one of the most significant days in a woman's life. In the best of times man and nature in Africa have lived in harmony and in the spirit of reciprocity, and across the continent seasonal rites are a time-honoured means by which people seek the protection of the spirit world for themselves, their land and their animals. The tall lean Dinka of the southern Sudan, elegant in their traditional beaded corsets, are devoted to their cattle. So are the Omo from the Omo river valley in southwest Ethiopia who perform an elaborate bull jumping ceremony to prove the young initiate's prowess. Bedik planting rites from southeast Senegal call on the spirit world to appease the powers of nature and bless the crops and the people who work the fields. The Ewe people of Togo and Ghana perform a yam blessing ceremony, and for the agriculturist Bobo of Burkina Faso nature is a benevolent entity that only human actions can upset. Their colourful bush mask rituals are meant to reestablish that equilibrium. To most Africans the worlds of the living and the dead are equally real, and the funeral is the last transitional rite before the departed joins the world of the spirits forever. The Surma burial rites in the southwest region of Ethiopia on the border with Sudan, and the collective Dogon Dama funeral in Mali south of the Niger, which takes place every dozen years, are fantastic ceremonies to witness. To have been allowed to photograph them speaks volumes about Beckwith and Fisher's talent to win the confidence of their subjects as well as of their ability not to let the lens become an annoying intruder. African Ceremonies is photographic story telling and adventure at its finest. It is art rather than ethnographic documentation and will, no doubt, be the definitive photographic record of African ceremonies for a long time to come..................
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Summary: Entertainment Not Scholarship!
Review: I received this book as a gift and was greatly dissapointed and offended. It was patronizing and exploitative. Moreover, it treated anceint cultures in a shallow and irresponsible manner --typically eurocentric!
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