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A Window on Africa: Ethiopian Portraits (Hardcover)

A Window on Africa: Ethiopian Portraits Cover Image
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Description


A companion to Hans Silvester's Natural Fashion: a unique portrait of everyday life in a village in the Omo Valley.


My little red window has become almost a mirror image of the startling changes taking place today in Africa, where so many conflicts have arisen from the coming together of different peoples, creating a chaotic jumble of humanity that obliges vastly different cultures and languages to bond together to form some kind of community. My window has captured a moment in time, nothing more, nothing less, and in its endless stream of faces we can see the diversity of humankind, its customs and its religions, in a place that the old world now has to share with the new, with strangers who are here to stay.” —Hans Silvester



The village of Kibish lies in the lower Omo Valley on the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Sudan. Far from any city and with an unforgiving climate, it is nonetheless a place where traditional lifestyles meet the contemporary world. This book is a beguiling portrait of its people, seen through an unusual lens—that of a simple window frame. From painted, marked, and scarified tribesmen to tradesmen with their tools and farmers with their animals, this collection is a priceless record of a unique and increasingly fragile way of life, one threatened by conflict, tourism, and the rapidly encroaching twenty-first century.

About the Author


Hans Silvester is a member of the Rapho photographic agency. His most recent reports took him to Rajasthan, where he photographed the people of the Thar desert and the incredible bestiary of Shekhawati wall paintings. His books include Natural Fashion and A Window on Africa. Silvester lives in France.

Product Details
ISBN: 9780500515624
ISBN-10: 050051562X
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Publication Date: April 1st, 2011
Pages: 160
Language: English