(2 of 3)
The photographers found Africa before they found each other. Beckwith had already photographed the Maasai when she and Fisher met in 1979. Fisher, a jewelry collector and designer, had mastered photography in order to document the body adornment of African tribespeople. Recalls Beckwith: "It only took us a week to decide to collaborate." They started with a Maasai warrior-graduation ceremony in Kenya and Wodaabe courtship rituals in Niger. Then, beginning in 1985, they spent five years photographing the everyday life of tribal peoples in the Horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia, a project that resulted in an award-winning book called African Ark (Abrams; 1990).
For the past five years, Beckwith and Fisher have been concentrating on sacred rites of passage that mark major life changes: birth, puberty, courtship, healing and death. This fieldwork will continue for one more year; the photographers are currently in the field filming the Swazi reed dance in Swaziland, Ndebele marriages in South Africa and Tuareg seasonal ceremonies in the Sahara. Says Beckwith: "These ceremonies are some of the most powerful events in these tribes. They promote healing and provide a powerful new sense of identity. Some of the rituals we've photographed no longer exist. And many of those that do have been altered by Western influences. We're trying to document as many as we can."
To do so, the pair often spend months at a time traveling through remote regions by car, mule or camel, with no means of communication with the outside world. In order to gain the trust of wary tribes, Beckwith and Fisher may live with the locals for weeks or even months, befriending the chief and integrating themselves as much as possible into daily life. The women usually work through a translator--sometimes two, in the case of especially rare dialects. Being female has made it easier to gain access to rites that outsiders rarely witness. Notes Fisher: "We're less threatening to the women, and we're able to see female rites that men would be forbidden to see." They're less threatening to men as well, and as a result have gained access to such rites as Maasai circumcisions and the male passage to adulthood in Benin.
It took Beckwith and Fisher 19 years to win permission to photograph the six-week-long Dogon Dama funeral ceremony in Mali, in which bodies are wrapped in cloths and hauled 300 ft. up a sheer cliff face to burial caves that have been in use since the 15th century. To get a shot of the interior of one of those caves, the duo had to be lowered from the top of the cliff by means of ropes and handmade ladders.
Even when permission is granted, the rituals don't always take place on schedule. Indeed, when the women showed up to film the Dogon funeral ceremony--which occurs only once every 12 years--they discovered that it wouldn't begin for six more weeks. "We often end up sitting and waiting for events to happen," says Fisher. Despite these obstacles, the pair have photographed scores of ceremonies, including initiation rites, male and female circumcisions, bridal fairs and weddings, funerals and even exorcisms.