For example, we taught our great nomad chief friend, Mokao, in the Sahara Desert to write in Fulfulde. If a major ceremony was happening, he would write a letter phonetically in Fulfulde, send it with a camel rider in the nearest town and get it posted to us. We would have to leave London on 24 hours' notice in response to these very special invitations from across the globe. Sometimes we would arrive and learn that the ceremony had been postponed for six weeks, and Mokao would say to us, "We have a wise Wodaabe proverb: She who cannot bear the smoke will never get to the fire." And that became our motto for having patience over the course of our fieldwork.

How did you get access to so many of the ceremonies, some of which had never been photographed or even witnessed by outsiders before?

Fisher: Both of us have been passionately involved with traditional Africa for 30 years each, and we have made very strong friends in different communities across the continent; we see every visit as a visit into a new community where we are going to become a part of that community. By the time we came to doing "African Ceremonies," we had become connected with certain families who really wanted us to record things. Also, when people realized how dedicated we were to something, they would say, "Have you heard that the Bella people, who have worked with the Tuareg, also do a very interesting part in the Cure Salee ceremony? Or this is a time when all the camel people come together, and they're looking for a salt cure from the ground, and you'll get a mixture of Tuareg, Wodaabe and Bella people all at once."

We had spent enough time to really win people's confidence, and we also believed that whenever we did anything in Africa, we should always repay in a way that was appropriate. Sometimes people really needed wells being dug for them, and sometimes people really needed millet to be carried into a village, or sometimes people just wanted personal razor blades for haircutting and fishing hooks. That kind of community made doing this book possible, because people let us into things that other visitors would never see.

Clearly you have a very deep-seated respect for the local cultures and the people you encountered along the way. They must have sensed that respect and sensitivity on your part, and probably opened up to you in a way that they wouldn't normally open up to outsiders.

Beckwith: We entered very slowly into villages. We would come in, we would meet the village chiefs, we would sit under an acacia tree, getting to know the chief and his family. We'd learn 50 words of every language group before we went in -- we'd usually write them on our hands so we wouldn't have to pull notes out and could be more spontaneous -- and just the effort to learn 50 words was so appreciated. We could greet people properly, we could thank them, we could ask basic questions. It was only when we really got to know the chief and his family in the village that we would pull out our cameras, because they would understand then what we wanted to do, and would have agreed to allow us to be there. Our goal was to be as invisible as possible. And when we finished our work -- because as Angela said, there's such a wonderful principle of reciprocity in Africa -- we would usually sit with the elders and say, "How is life for you and what do you need?" And our goal wasn't to give them something that would depend on us to maintain but, rather, to help them with something that they could have for themselves, totally apart from us.

So sometimes it was needing water from a well, and sometimes it was, as in the case of the Masai, "Could you help us to start the very first all-Masai primary school?" And we would say, "Why do you need this?" -- because they were so resistant to sending their children to school -- and they would say to us, "The government is forcing us to send our children to school and we're sending them out to Kikuyu schools; they're learning about agriculture and they're coming home ashamed of being traditional pastoral people and thinking that they're being 'primitive.' We want our children to be proud of who they are and, if they must enter the 20th century, to enter with their values intact and with a sense of how pastoralism can survive and enhance the country. So we would like to teach our children with Masai teachers and Masai textbooks." We got very involved in this project and helped start the first all-Masai primary school on the border of Kenya and Tanzania. Our feeling always was to give back and honor all that people had given us to make our work possible.

And by doing that, you became woven into these people's lives.

Beckwith: For years and visit after visit. We visited the different groups many times.

How many different groups did you actually visit?

Fisher: Probably about 45 different groups. The interesting thing is that our photographs became far more interesting after our third or fourth visit. We'd look at them and think, "Isn't that fascinating, that we knew exactly where to take that photograph from?" or "That photograph of so-and-so is much better; he's really relaxed with us." There's just an area where you realize that familiarity and trust in photography -- as well as, for us, familiarity with what's happening in a ceremony -- are important. If you can see a ceremony twice, you can actually think: That whole group is going to go down to the chalk cliff and paint their bodies and go through the forest; we'd be better off in this position if we can possibly get access.

So for days in advance we could ask the elders, "Would it possible for us to go into the forest and take the chalk cliff?" It's just a feeling of pre-guessing things, as well as having people feel very comfortable with you. We would hang out with them 24 hours a day, and some of the nicest photographs would just be taken very casually, when you'd just suddenly think, "Doesn't she look wonderful? I want to take her picture. She's just doing her thing."

Beckwith: What was really delightful was that the longer we stayed with people, the more the women would want us to transform to look like them. With the desert nomads in Niger, for example, after a few months, they said, "To tell you the truth, we don't actually like the clothing that you wear, and your hairstyles aren't very fashionable. Could we tress your hair, or could we dress you properly?" And so pretty soon we were wearing embroidered wrappers and little tunics, and our hairs were in many braids, and they'd say, "We know you may not want to be scarified, but can we draw little patterns on your cheeks so you have our designs, and put head wraps on you?" And pretty soon, we were looking just like the desert nomad women, and they were so much happier with us.

The difficulty came when we'd be sitting with the women sharing intimacies and suddenly the men would start doing something absolutely amazing, and we really needed to be photographing it, but we couldn't leap up because we'd become honorary women.

Recent Stories