Background
Carol Beckwith was born on July 10, 1945. Her hometown was Boston in Massachusetts, United States.
1021 Dulaney Valley Rd, Baltimore, MD 21204, USA
Carol Beckwith attended Goucher College from 1963 till 1965.
230 Fenway, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Carol Beckwith attended Boston Museum School of Fine Arts from 1965 till 1968.
1 Art School Road, Skowhegan, ME 04950, Madison, ME 04950, USA
Carol attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture from 1966 till 1967.
(A photographic celebration of the nomadic Wodaabe of Nige...)
A photographic celebration of the nomadic Wodaabe of Niger features thirty line drawings, 144 full-color photographs, and a narrative that follows a herdsman and his family and kinsmen through one year's journey in parched, sub-Saharan Africa.
https://www.amazon.com/Nomads-Niger-Marion-Van-Offelen/dp/0810981254/?tag=2022091-20
1993
(A collection of eighty-nine full-color photographs from t...)
A collection of eighty-nine full-color photographs from the widely-praised best-seller African Ceremonies offers images from across the African continent, capturing the traditions of rites of passages, including births, marriages, and deaths, along with seasonal rituals and religious ceremonies. Original. 20,000 first printing.
https://www.amazon.com/Passages-Photographs-Africa-Carol-Beckwith/dp/0810929481/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(Award-winning photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fis...)
Award-winning photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher present an unparalleled collection of 250 photographs, drawn from their work over thirty years, revealing an inclusive look at the people and cultures of Africa. This astounding collection of rare and intimate photographs depicts a lifetime of events and experiences from birth and coming-of-age to marriage and death from every part of Africa. These varied cultural "faces" are expressed in the rolling eyes and flashing teeth of the Wodaabe charm dancers of Niger, the colorful beaded bodices of the Dinka of Sudan, the striking painted faces of the Karo of Ethiopia, and countless people beaded, draped in beautiful cloth, and veiled to honor a special moment in life. With their unique eye for Africa and its inhabitants, Beckwith and Fisher have created a moving, personal tribute to some of the most beautiful people on Earth.
https://www.amazon.com/Faces-Africa-Photography-Geographic-Collectors/dp/1426204248/?tag=2022091-20
2009
(The seminal volume on body painting and adornment by the ...)
The seminal volume on body painting and adornment by the world’s preeminent photographers of African culture. Following the international masterpiece Africa Adorned, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher have focused on the traditions of body painting spanning the vastly unique cultures of the African continent. In a contemporary world so fascinated with tattoos and piercings, Beckwith and Fisher document the origins of these fashionable adornments as passed down through African tribal culture. Featured are portraits of the richly colored, detailed, and exquisite body paintings of the Surma, Karo, Maasai, Himba, and Hamar peoples, among others. Drawing from expeditions in the field and firsthand experiences with African peoples and cultures over the past thirty years and with more than 250 spectacular photographs, this is the definitive work on the expressiveness and imagination of African cultural painting of the human body.
https://www.amazon.com/Painted-Bodies-African-Painting-Scarification/dp/0847834050/?tag=2022091-20
2012
(The ancient Aksumite Kingdom, now a part of Ethiopia, was...)
The ancient Aksumite Kingdom, now a part of Ethiopia, was among the first in the world to adopt Christianity as the official state religion. In AD 340 King Ezana commissioned the construction of the imposing basilica of St. Mary of Tsion. It was here, the Ethiopians say, that Menelik, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments. By the fifth century, nine saints from Byzantium were spreading the faith deep into the mountainous countryside, and over the next ten centuries a series of spectacular churches were either built or excavated out of solid rock, all of them in regular use to this day. Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has the best known cluster, but the northern region of Tigray, less well known and more remote, has many churches that are architectural masterpieces of the basilical type.
https://www.amazon.com/Ethiopia-Living-Churches-Ancient-Kingdom/dp/9774168437/?tag=2022091-20
2017
(African Twilight is the two-volume, slipcased magnum opus...)
African Twilight is the two-volume, slipcased magnum opus of the two pioneering documentary photographers of African tribal cultures and ceremonies - a world that is quickly vanishing before our very eyes.
https://www.amazon.com/African-Twilight-Vanishing-Ceremonies-Continent/dp/0847860175/?tag=2022091-20
2018
artist educator Photographer author
Carol Beckwith was born on July 10, 1945. Her hometown was Boston in Massachusetts, United States.
Carol Beckwith attended Goucher College from 1963 till 1965. Then she attended Boston Museum School of Fine Arts from 1965 till 1968. Carol attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture from 1966 till 1967. After obtaining her degree in Painting and Photography, she won a traveling fellowship from the Boston Museum, which let her travel to other countries for the first time. Carol spent seven months in Japan, living in a Zen temple and studying calligraphic painting. She continued to travel through Southeast Asia and New Guinea, where Carol witnessed a "sing-sing", a gathering of 90,000 Highland warriors, in Mount Hagen, and paddled up Chambri Lakes in a canoe, an experience Carol called "one of the most wonderful, and in a way formative, experiences in my life."
Beckwith studied photography in college but had initially intended to become a painter. It was during her travels through New Guinea that she realized the advantages of photography, saying that "there was such a vast amount of exciting material that I began to photograph instead, approaching photography with the eye of a painter in terms of light, color, composition. I wanted the images to be multilayered experiences in a way that a painting is... [Photography] seemed to be a more suitable medium for the pace of travel."
At the beginning of 1972 Carol Beckwith worked as a teacher of Chinese calligraphy brash painting at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Beckwith's first major collaboration was with Tepilit Ole Saitoti, an anthropologist and former Maasai warrior whom she met in Boston during one of her painting exhibitions. Their collaboration produced the book Maasai (Abrams, 1980). Carol Beckwith also collaborated with anthropologist Marion van Offelen to produce Nomads of Niger (Abrams, 1983), a monograph on the Wodaabe cattle herders. Although she did not have formal training in anthropology, through working alone as well as with other anthropologists such as Saitoti, van Offelen and Linda Donley-Reid, she "was able to absorb techniques of interviewing, to learn what questions to ask in order to explore the many aspects of traditional African life."
Beckwith first heard about Angela Fisher through Fisher's brother Simon in 1974, during a hot air balloon ride in Maasai country. They met during Fisher's exhibition of traditional African jewelry in Nairobi, where they discovered they shared a passion for documenting traditional African cultures. Within one week, they were photographing a Maasai warrior ceremony together.
During more than three decades of collaboration, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher produced African Ark (Abrams, 1990), African Ceremonies (Abrams, 1999), Passages (Abrams, 2000), Surma (Taller Experimental, 2002), Karo (Taller Experimental, 2002), Maasai, Himba, Hamar (Taller Experimental, 2002), Faces of Africa (Abrams, 2004), Lamu: Kenya’s Enchanted Island (Abrams, 2009), and Dinka (Abrams, 2010). They are currently (2011) working on completing their pan-African study of the art of body painting for a book entitled Africa: Spirit of Paint, as well as on their third and final installation of African Ceremonies, titled African Twilight, scheduled for publication in 2013. Beckwith resides in New York City and Fisher in London.
(A collection of eighty-nine full-color photographs from t...)
2000(A photographic celebration of the nomadic Wodaabe of Nige...)
1993(Award-winning photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fis...)
2009(African Twilight is the two-volume, slipcased magnum opus...)
2018(The ancient Aksumite Kingdom, now a part of Ethiopia, was...)
2017(The seminal volume on body painting and adornment by the ...)
2012Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher: “We were fortunate to have started our photography in the 1970s. We had the privilege to witness so many of the rich traditional cultures of that time. As the years progressed and the ceremonies we were witnessing began to change before our eyes, we gained a sense of urgency. Today, over 40% of the ceremonies we have recorded no longer exist. Many rituals we saw as well as the costumes, jewelry, and adornments have evolved over just a few decades into unrecognizable forms - or have vanished altogether - as Africans move inexorably toward a more urbanized and technology connected existence.”
Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher witnessed political upheavals, closed frontiers, droughts and on occasion dangerous encounters. “The purpose” say Carol and Angela “of creating the African Twilight book of our photographs was to insure the legacy of Africa’s ancient traditions and stories for future generations.”
They work very slowly in Africa, we've always had this philosophy that one must take on African time when working in the continent. So we always try to get into the community, we start living in it, we make friends, gain trust, and then start taking photographs. We believe very strongly that if you want to capture a ceremony and photograph it to its full capacity you must have the trust of the people.