Africa

On This Earth: Photographs from East Africa

Nick Brandt depicts the animals of East Africa with an intimacy and artistry unmatched by other photographers who choose wildlife as their subject. He creates these majestic sepia and blue-tone photos contrasting moments of quintessential stillness with bursts of dramatic action by engaging with these creatures on an exceptionally intimate level, without the customary use of a telephoto lens. Evocative of classical art, from dignified portraits to sweeping natural tableaux, Brandt's images artfully and simply capture animals in their natural states of being. With a foreword by Alice Sebold and an introduction by Jane Goodall, On This Earth is a gorgeous portfolio of some of the last wild animals and a heartfelt elegy to a vanishing world.

Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa

An unprecedented series of images showing the Omo people's imaginative body decoration and embellishments.

The scene of tribal conflicts and guerrilla incursions, Ethiopia's Omo Valley is also home to fascinating rites and traditions that have survived for thousands of years. The nomadic peoples who inhabit this valley share a gift for body painting and elaborate adornments borrowed from nature, and Hans Silvester has captured the results in a series of photographs made over the course of numerous trips.

In this region of East Africa, the rivers that run through the dry savannas are home to abundant flowers, papyrus, and wild fruit trees, and this luxuriance becomes an invitation to creativity and spectacle. Within hand's reach, a multitude of plants inspire fanciful and ephemeral self-decoration, and the Omo react spontaneously: a leaf, root, seed pod, or flower is quickly transformed into an accessory. As in the West one might don a hat, people create caps from tufts of grass. As one would knot a tie or scarf, they ornament themselves with banana leaves or a stem laden with flowers. These decorations are embellished with butterfly wings, buffalo horns, boar's teeth, colorful feathers, and the like, and are further enhanced by body painting with pigments made from powdered stone, plants, berries, and river mud.

Here is a priceless record of a unique and increasingly fragile way of life, one threatened by conflict, climate change, and tourism. 160 color illustrations.

Africa

Eye on Africa: Thirty years of Africa images, selected by Salgado himself Sebasti?o Salgado is one the most respected photojournalists working today, his reputation forged by decades of dedication and powerful black and white images of dispossessed and distressed people taken in places where most wouldn?t dare to go. Although he has photographed throughout South America and around the globe, his work most heavily concentrates on Africa, where he has shot more than 40 reportage works over a period of 30 years. From the Dinka tribes in Sudan and the Himba in Namibia to gorillas and volcanoes in the lakes region to displaced peoples throughout the continent, Salgado shows us all facets of African life today. Whether he's documenting refugees or vast landscapes, Salgado knows exactly how to grab the essence of a moment so that when one sees his images one is involuntarily drawn into them. His images artfully teach us the disastrous effects of war, poverty, disease, and hostile climatic conditions. This book brings together Salgado's photos of Africa in three parts. The first concentrates on the southern part of the continent (Mozambique, Malawi, Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia), the second on the Great Lakes region (Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya), and the third on the Sub-Saharan region (Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Mauritania, Senegal, Ethiopia). Texts are provided by renowned Mozambique novelist Mia Couto, who describes how today's Africa reflects the effects of colonization as well as the consequences of economic, social, and environmental crises. This stunning book is not only a sweeping document of Africa but an homage to the continent's history, people, and natural phenomena.

The End of the Game: The Last Word from Paradise

Researched, photographed, and compiled over 20 years, Beard's "End of the Game" tells the tale of the enterprisers, explorers, missionaries, and big-game hunters who changed the face of Africa in the 20th century.

Curse Of The Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta

Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta takes a graphic look at the profound cost of oil exploitation in West Africa. Featuring images by world-renowned photojournalist Ed Kashi and text by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, prominent Nigerian journalists, human rights activists, and University of California at Berkeley professor Michael Watts, this book traces the 50-year history of Nigeria's oil interests and the resulting environmental degradation and community conflicts that have plagued the region.
Now one of the major suppliers of U.S. oil, Nigeria is the sixth largest producer of oil in the world. Set against a backdrop of what has been called the scramble for African oil, Curse of the Black Gold is the first book to document the consequences of a half-century of oil exploration and production in one of the world's foremost centers of biodiversity. This book exposes the reality of oil's impact and the absence of sustainable development in its wake, providing a compelling pictorial history of one of the world's great deltaic areas. Accompanied by powerful writing by some of the most prominent public intellectuals and critics in contemporary Nigeria, Kashi's photographs capture local leaders, armed militants, oil workers, and nameless villagers, all of whose fates are inextricably linked. His exclusive coverage bears witness to the ongoing struggles of local communities, illustrating the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty.
The publication of Curse of the Black Gold occurs at a moment of worldwide concern over dependency on petroleum, dubbed by New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman as "the resource curse." Much has been written about the drama of the search for oil—Daniel Yergin's The Prize and Ryszard Kapus´cin´ski's Shah of Shahs are two of the most widely lauded—but there has been no serious examination of the relations between oil, environment, and community in a particular oil-producing region. Curse of the Black Gold is a landmark work of historic significance.

Eyes over Africa

In 2006, to fulfill a long-held dream, widely acclaimed photographer Michael Poliza and friend Stefan Breuer undertook a helicopter journey across Africa. Skimming close to the ground, they flew over 19 countries. Poliza's alluring--and often surprising--photographs share this exceptional journey with the world. With a bird's-eye view, we witness the astounding beauty, scale and diversity of this imposing continent. The accompanying texts give a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the photographs, and brief background to some of the most fascinating subject matters.

Faces of Africa

Serengeti: Natural Order on the African Plain

Spending 18 months on the Serengeti Plain of eastern Africa, Iwago captures in nearly 300 extraordinary full-color images a world of calm beauty and quick violence, where the daily drama of life and death for over two million animals is played against a spectacular landscape. Sure to win a new round of fans, this classic, best-selling (over 90,000 copies sold!) volume of wildlife photography is now available in a handsomely jacketed new hardcover edition.

Origins: African Wisdom for Every Day (Offerings for Humanity)

This third volume in Offerings for Humanity-the Föllmis' acclaimed series celebrating the spiritual heritage of various cultures-takes us to the heart of African life and thought. Olivier and Danielle Föllmi guide us on a voyage of discovery through this immense continent and its mosaic of peoples, from the Himba shepherds to the Peul nomads, from the deserts of Namibia to the savannah of Cameroon.Following the success of the first two books, Offerings and Wisdom, the Föllmis now plumb the cultural wealth of the African people, whose ancestral values have been passed on through the generations as part of a rich oral tradition. Inspiring reflections by leading African personalities-from Leopold Sedar Senghor to Nelson Mandela-are paired here with 365 beautiful and moving photographs. On the border of myth and reality, Origins opens a window onto Africa's untold treasures of exemplary teachings and inherited wisdom.

Tribes of the Great Rift Valley

Tribes of the Great Rift Valley is a celebration of the traditional peoples who occupy the lands of the Great Rift Valley, from the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Eritrea, across the Ethiopian highlands, and down to the great lakes and plains of Kenya, Tanzania, and Malawi. Here are the proud, majestic warriors of the Maasai and Samburu, the Mursi with their jutting lip-plates, the guinea-fowl-painted faces of the Karo, the bull jumpers of the Hamar, and the honey seekers of the forests, the Batwa, among many other tribes. These fascinating peoples of the Rift Valley are remarkably diverse, yet sadly, nearly all of these communities face extinction in the near future due to Western influence.

Elizabeth GilbertÂ’s glorious black-and-white photography accompanied by her thoughtful, engaging text, offers sweeping views of this magnificent and sometimes harsh landscape and its peoples. Thought-provoking and remarkable, Tribes of the Great Rift Valley is a time capsule, perhaps even the last record, of age-old traditions and a way of life that will almost certainly soon vanish from our planet.