Women Photographers in Africa: Lynn McLaren

The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA) is pleased to share the Lynn McClaren collection as part of the Women Photographers in Africa initiative. Eluned M. Demarest – better known professionally as Lynn McLaren (1922-2008) – was an American photojournalist whose work was published in National Geographic, Time-Life, Newsweek, and the New York Times and helped global audiences visualize foreign cultures and landscapes. Her collection (EEPA 2007-009) of 648 color slides (35mm), 38 color transparencies, and 10 black-and-white prints has been digitized and will be available online later this year.

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1922, McLaren graduated from Vassar College and the Missouri School of Photojournalism. In stark contrast with the experiences of even other working women at the time, she enjoyed a long career that permitted her to travel around the globe. Also photographing parts of Asia and Europe, her collection at the EEPA depicts Kenya and Tanzania in 1966. While the collection represents only a fraction of McLaren’s more than 50-year career, it samples several genres, compositions, and subjects that define both her artistic eye and professional portfolio. 

[Lugongo] sisal estate near Tanga, Tanzania

Photograph by Lynn McLaren, ca. 1966, EEPA 2007-009-0336. Lynn McLaren Collection, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

Trade and agriculture of major crops and exports along the Swahili coast, including cotton, sisal, and mangrove poles, are represented extensively in the collection. Wide views of cotton and sisal plantations capture their vastness and suggest economic significance of the crops to the region, while expressive portraits of plantation workers locate the humanity within those vast landscapes and economies. Also included in the collection are numerous images of landscapes and animals seen in several East African "game parks," now known as conservation areas or national parks.

Carrying sisal stalks before processing, Tanzania

Photograph by Lynn McLaren, August 1966, EEPA 2007-009-0601. Lynn McLaren Collection, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

An environmental portraitist, McLaren enjoyed photographing people in their natural surroundings. She was particularly drawn to compositions of people in doorways, and she often turned her lens toward domestic and women’s lives. McLaren’s point of view may noticeably depart from that of her male counterparts in subject matter, composition, and gaze. It also may depart from the points of view of African photographers, photographers of color, and non-journalistic photographers. Inherent to photographic mediums, the collection represents the photographer’s way of seeing her subjects.

[Arab man wearing kofia seated in front of carved door], Lamu Island, Kenya

Photograph by Lynn McLaren, February 1966, EEPA 2007-009-0061. Lynn McLaren Collection, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution

As an extension of the photographer’s eye, the camera lens necessarily captures the photographer’s point of view from their own cultural standpoint. The EEPA’s collections are unique among those of the larger National Museum of African Art because they primarily represent documentary and tourist photography by non-Africans, whereas the museum’s permanent collection items are generally created by Africans. This nature is important to understanding these photographic collections since critics describe photography as inherently voyeuristic and the camera as a tool of colonialism. A collective imagination of Africa and Africans as culturally homogenous at best and uncivilized at worst has been shaped by outsider photography published for the consumption of curious (if voyeuristic) outsiders, like much of McLaren’s work that reached global audiences through publications like National Geographic.  

As an American woman photojournalist, her images represent a gendered, racialized, and inquiring way of viewing two African nations during an important political period. While other collections in the Women Photographers series depict the peak of colonization as far back as the 1920s, McLaren’s images capture Tanzania and Kenya’s immediate postcolonial years (1961 and 1963, respectively). Several shots of Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s 1966 visit to Tanzania (EEPA_2007-009-0692) depict this transitional period. Although the Women Photographers arguably symbolize colonization in embodiment and medium, they also underscore how gender modifies gaze.

Leah Minadeo

Wayne State University, School of Information Sciences

Leah Minadeo is a graduate student of the MLS program at Wayne State University. During Summer 2022, Minadeo volunteered with the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives as part of their practicum, cataloging Lynn McLaren’s collection (EEPA 2007-009) and Marilyn Heldman’s collection (EEPA 2016-005) as part of the Women Photographers in Africa initiative. 

Anthropology’s Neighboring Fields: New Virtual Finding Aids for Three NAA Collections

The National Anthropological Archives (NAA) primarily contains the papers of anthropologists, archaeologists, and anthropological societies and institutions. However, there are other disciplines that are connected to anthropology and its work, and these disciplines are also reflected in the NAA’s collections. Today I want to highlight the collections of a geologist (Richard LeRoy Hay), a paleobotanist (C. Earle Smith Jr.), and an animal behaviorist (Richard Lynch Garner).

Richard LeRoy Hay (1926-2006)

Richard LeRoy Hay was a geologist who was best known for his contributions to the fields of sedimentary petrography and archaeological geology. Hay worked with Mary Leakey, a celebrated paleontologist, and her husband, Louis Leakey, on their excavations at Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli in Tanzania. The geological framework that he provided for their excavations helped to place their discoveries into a chronological context.

Annotated photographs of Olduvai. The Richard L. Hay papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Hay earned his B.S. and M.S. in geology from Northwestern University and his Ph.D. from Princeton University. He served in the US Army Corps of Engineers (1952-1954) and worked for the US Geological Survey (1954-1955) prior to moving into academia. He then taught at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (1955-1957); the University of California, Berkeley (1957-1983); the University of Illinois, Urbana (1983-1997), where he was the Ralph E. Grim Professor of Geology; and the University of Arizona, Tucson (1998-2006). He made his first trip to Olduvai Gorge in 1962, when he was at the University of California, Berkeley.

Though he performed geological fieldwork in many other locations, he is best known for his work at Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli because of the paleontological importance of the finds at these locations. Olduvai Gorge has provided the longest continuous known record of human evolution and the development of stone-tool industries.¹ In Laetoli, Hay performed a geological analysis of the tuff where a trail of roughly 70 footprints were found. The footprints are believed to have been made by Australopithecus afarensis and provide evidence of the evolution of humans by providing information about the shape of the foot and the development of bipedal movement.²

Annotated photographs of Olduvai. The Richard L. Hay papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Hay published frequently on Olduvai Gorge, and his detailed study of the geologic history of Olduvai, Geology of the Olduvai Gorge (1976), was his most significant publication. He also published on his work at Laetoli, coauthoring “Pliocene Footprints in the Laetoli Beds at Laetoli, Northern Tanzania” (1979) and “The Fossil Footprints of Laetoli” (1982) with Mary Leakey.

Hay was a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the California Academy of Sciences. His work was celebrated in his lifetime, earning him the Geological Society of America’s Kirk Bryan Award in 1978, the Rip Rapp Archeological Geology Award in 2000, and the Leakey Foundation’s Leakey Prize, for intellectual achievement in the field of human evolution, in 2001. His collection is of moderate size, comprised of 25 boxes, and contains correspondence, field notebooks, maps, photographs, data, and documentation of geological specimens.

C. Earle Smith Jr. (1922-1987)

C. Earle Smith Jr. trained in economic botany, which is the study of the relationship between plants and people, at Harvard University, earning his B.A. in 1949, his M.A. in 1951, and his Ph.D. in 1953. He went on to study this relationship between people and plants in an archaeological context, becoming one of the founders of the modern field of archaeobotany.

His research focused on archaeologically recovered plant remains and their usage by humans, studying the early domestication and distribution of corn, cotton, avocado, and beans. His first discovery in this field occurred while he was still an undergraduate, when he discovered the earliest remains of corn found to that point with fellow student Herbert Dick at Bat Cave, New Mexico, in 1948. He continued to pursue his archaeobotanical studies by serving as the botanist at archaeological excavations in Latin America, working primarily in Mexico and Peru.

Photograph of botanical samples from Tehuacan. The C. Earle Smith Jr. papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

In addition to his ethnobotanical fieldwork in the Yucatán, Panama, the United States, Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and Australia, Smith worked at a variety of institutions throughout the United States. He was an assistant curator of botany at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and acting director of the Taylor Memorial Arboretum (1953-1958); a curator of botany at the Field Museum of Natural History (1959-1961); the Senior Research Botanist for the Agricultural Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1962-1969); on the faculty in anthropology and biology departments at the University of Alabama (1970-1987), serving as the acting chair of anthropology department (1981-1986); and the President of the Society for Economic Botany (1979). His collection is comprised of 21 boxes and contains correspondence, research notes, data, manuscripts, publications, and photographs.

Richard Lynch Garner (1848-1920)

Richard Lynch Garner was a self-taught zoologist from southwest Virginia. He studied primate behavior, analyzing the vocal communication of apes. He made sound recordings in zoos starting in 1884, moving on to study apes in their natural habitat in the Ogawai River region in 1892. He asserted that he was able to understand the languages of apes and that he could teach them to speak human languages.³ He brought apes back to America to exhibit them in a travelling show, claiming that he was able to communicate with a chimpanzee named Susie.

Richard Lynch Garner performing studies with a child and a chimpanzee. Richard Lynch Garner papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Garner expanded his studies to observe general primate behavior, spending time in an elevated cage within an area inhabited by chimpanzees and gorillas. His collection also contains his observations about the local people and their customs which he made during his trips to Africa. Garner “saw himself as a defender of paternal southern views of race from northerners and from Christian missionaries”⁴ and the observations he made in Gabon reflect this perspective.

Garner is a slightly different kettle of fish than Hay and Smith, as his studies did not meet modern standards or methods and many of his conclusions have proven false. Even during his lifetime, he was denigrated by the professional scientific community.⁵ However, his papers provide a glimpse into early evolutionary study and the colonialist and racially biased outlook which influenced scientific thinkers of his time. Garner’s influence on the academic community is evidenced by the route through which his papers reached the NAA. They were originally in the possession of J. P. Harrington, a noted linguist, whose interest in Garner’s work prompted him to write a biography of the scientist. The collection is quite small, consisting of only five boxes, and contains a diary, correspondence, manuscripts, poetry, data, financial and legal records, maps, biographical material, artwork, and photographs.

 

Katherine Christensen

Contract Archivist, National Anthropological Archives

_____________________________

¹ “Olduvai Gorge,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed November 5, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/place/Olduvai-Gorge

² “Laetoli Footprint Trails,” Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, accessed November 5, 2020, https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/footprints/laetoli-footprint-trails

³ “Missing Links,” University of Georgia Press, accessed November 18, 2020, https://ugapress.org/book/9780820340609/missing-links/

⁴ Rich, Jeremy. “Heresy Is the Only True Religion: Richard Lynch Garner (1848–1920), A Southern Freethinker in Africa and America.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 12, No. 1 (January 2013): 65-94.

⁵ “Missing Links,” University of Georgia Press, accessed November 18, 2020, https://ugapress.org/book/9780820340609/missing-links/

Collection Highlight: Historic Maps of Africa

Have you ever wanted to visit Africa?  The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives is here to help!  Check out this collection of Historic Maps of Africa to learn more about Africa's cultures, history, geography, politics, and more.  Safe travels!

"A New Description of Africa -- 1631", engraved by W. J. Blaeu, published by Folger Shakespeare Library,
EEPA 1991-001-0001

The Archives is open for researchers by appointment only, Tuesday-Thursday, 10-4. Please see the EEPA website for more information.


Eden Orelove
Photo Archivist
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives
National Museum of African Art

Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa: Marli Shamir

Marli Shamir and Peul (Fula) woman, Mopti, Mali, 1970, EEPA 2013-009-0322

The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA) is pleased to share the collection of the next featured photographer in our Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa series, Marli Shamir.  Shamir (1919-2017) was an Israeli photographer known for her extensive work in Burkina Faso, the Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, and Mali, which she completed from 1966 to 1973. Her collection (EEPA 2013-009) includes 1,817 black and white negatives (35mm and 120mm), 1,519 color slides, several hundred prints, and manuscript materials. The negatives have been digitized and will available online later this year.

Bamako man mending fishing net, Mali, 1968, EEPA 2013-009-0410

Shamir was intrigued with both the peoples and architecture of the Sahel region of western and north-central Africa. Trained at the Contempora (Contempora—Lehrateliers für neue Werkkunst) (1934-1937), a school in Berlin affiliated with the Bauhaus art movement, and in Copehagen, where she studied microphotography, her photos do not just document, but artistically depict the inhabitants and architecture of the Sahel. A specialist in black and white photography, she highlighted the stark differences and contrasts in light and angles, purposely juxtaposing dramatically different shades, textures, and shapes.

Windows and shutters, Timbukto, Mali, 1967, EEPA 2013-009-0750

In 1938, Shamir's life was seriously disrupted when she was forced to immigrate from Nazi Germany to Israel, where she lived in a kibbutz for a period of time. From 1941 to 1943, she worked as a scientific photographer at the Weizmann Institute in Raichoven and then, at just 26 years of age, opened her own photography studio in 1945 in Jerusalem. She ran this successful business for several years before marrying Meir Shamir, a former Israeli diplomat and ambassador in 1953. It was while living in Africa with her husband from 1966 to 1973 that she produced her most recognized body of work.

Bambara woman painting a Bokolanfini textile, Bamako, Mali, 1969, EEPA 2013-009-1197

During Shamir’s stay in Mali, she met Pascal James Imperato, a doctor and historian of African art, with whom she collaborated on the article, “Bokolanfini: Mud Cloth of the Bamana of Mali” (African Arts,  1970) [1]. Shamir also exhibited her work in 1976 at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in the exhibit SAHEL, which depicted the rural and urban architecture and people of Mali. The exhibition toured Europe later that same year. 

Man standing near ceramic rain pipes, Mopti, Mali, 1968,
EEPA 2013-009-0547

While most of the exhibitions of Shamir’s work have featured her photographs taken in Mali (especially in Djenne), Shamir was interested in exhibiting her images from the larger region, noting that doing so would provide the exhibit with important contextual information and add “some warm touch to it.” [Letter to Professor J. Brunet-Jailly, Director of Research at ORSTOM, October 13, 1998] [2].  This preference of inclusiveness is evident in her photographs: she took not just static shots, but also depicted the process of making art, of celebrations, of daily life; she strove to convey people’s stories.

Child by bread oven, Timbuktu, Mali, 1967-1970, EEPA 2013-009-0760

Joseph Brunet-Jailly, a French professor of economics, saw her exhibit and, deeply impressed, showed Shamir’s photographs to Albakaye Ousmane Kounta, the national poet of Mali. The images inspired Kounta to create poetry to accompany Shamir’s photographs. The resulting book, Djenne-Ferey –La terre habitee (France: Grandvaux, 2005), reflects the collaboration of the two artists and pays tribute to the people of Mali and its heritage. One of the Kounta's poems, "Les Saints" [3], alongside the accompanying image, follows:

San Friday Mosque, Mali, 1971, EEPA 2013-009-1653

Les saints

A chacun
Une couronne
Enrobée d'argile
Une caresse étirée
De la base jusqu'au sommet

A chacun deux trous de secrets 
L'un pour les voeux
Intimes qu'on murmure
L'autre pour les offrandes
Qu'on glisse dans l'ombre

Translation:

The Saints

To each
A crown
Clay clad
A stretched caress
From the base to the top

To each two holes of secrets
One for the wishes
Intimate whispering
The other for offerings
Slide in the shade

From 1977 to 1981, Shamir lived in Strasbourg where she worked with a Canadian researcher to study the new style of architecture in Mali. This work is now stored at the Center of Documentation in Strasbourg. After living for a few years in Paris in the early 1990s in order to familiarize herself with new techniques in color photography, Shamir returned to Israel with her husband. Shamir continued photographing local urban scenes in her neighborhood of Baka, Jerusalem late into her life, until she passed away at the age of 98 in 2017.

Bamako man wearing blown up "Boubou" on bicycle, Mali, 1966-1971, EEPA 2013-009-0396

We hope that you enjoy Shamir’s photographs as more are posted online. Be sure and check out the finding aid for more details. The EEPA holds an additional collection (EEPA 1995-025) of prints of Shamir’s work.  You can view that catalog record here.

The EEPA is open for researchers by appointment only, Tuesday-Thursday, 10-4. Please see the EEPA website for contact information.

[1] Pascal James Imperato and Marli Shamir, "Bokolanfini: Mud Cloth of the Bamana of Mali",  African Arts 3, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 32-41, 80.
[2] Marli Shamir Collection, EEPA 2013-009, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.
[3] Marli Shamir and Albakaye Ousmane Kounta, Djenne-Ferey –La terre habitee (France: Grandvaux, 2005), 22-23.


Eden Orelove
Photo Archivist
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives
National Museum of African Art

Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa: Constance Stuart Larrabee

Constance Stuart with Ndebele men, South Africa, circa 1936-1945,
EEPA 1998-060866

The Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA) is pleased to share the Constance Stuart Larrabee collection.  One of the most researched photographers at the EEPA, Larrabee’s photographic collection depicting Africa will soon be available online.  This large collection, dating from 1935 to 1988, includes over 9,000 negatives, 3,000 silver gelatin photographic prints, two of Larrabee's cameras, numerous scrapbooks, and manuscript materials, including correspondence, articles, and more! 

As part of the Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa project (an article about the project, published on the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative website, is here), the EEPA staff recently digitized over 5,700 large format black and white negatives shot by Larrabee in South Africa, previously uncatalogued and inaccessible to the public.  

Plans are underway to process Larrabee’s remaining manuscripts and her extensive office files, which will provide insights into her photographic practice after leaving South Africa and her extensive work with exhibitions and publications in the United States.

Ndebele mother and child, South Africa, 1947, EEPA 1998-060403

Born in 1914, Larrabee has played an indelible role in advancing the professionalization of women photographers, especially in Africa.  The majority of her photographs document South Africa, where she was raised.  Her socially conscious photography informed the wider world about the state of education, housing, government, religion and employment in Africa.  But mostly she conveyed the spirit and beauty of Africa; her work is clearly devoted to this great continent and the people who live there.    

Three boys in Basuto (Lesotho), 1941, EEPA 1998-062667

Educated at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Photography in London (1933-1935) and at the Bavarian State Institute for Photography in Munich (1935-1936), Larrabee developed solid technical skills and a style that was influenced by the avant-garde work of the Bauhaus artists. Her camera of choice was the Rolleiflex, which she used throughout her career.   

Ndebele child, circa 1936-1949, EEPA 1998-060445

Upon returning to South Africa in 1936, Larrabee set up her own studio, the Constance Stuart Portrait Studio, in Pretoria.  There she photographed many leading cultural and political figures of the period.  In the late 1930s, Larrabee began photographing the peoples of South Africa, but soon left her homeland to serve as South Africa’s first woman war correspondent in World War II.  She worked with the South African Sixth Division in the Italian Appenines, and with the American 7^thArmy in France, writing articles and sending images for publication in the magazine Libertas.  

Recently donated by the Corcoran Gallery of Art to the EEPA, many of Larrabee’s World War II photographs are now available for research.  These images provide insight into Larrabee’s experiences during this period and reveal an evolution of style; a maturity that would inform her photography for the rest of her life.  

Following the war, Larrabee returned to South Africa and increasingly photographed the peoples of the country.  She traveled to such locations as Basutoland (now Lesotho), Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Johannesburg, Natal province, Soweto, Swaziland, Transkei, eastern Transvaal, the Umzimkulu Valley and Zululand.  She documented Afrikaners, Ndebele, Sotho, Xhosa, and others.  Her photographs convey a particular fascination with humanity, but also explore architecture, landscapes, and communities.    

Alan Paton teaching children, Natal, February 1949, EEPA 1998-060154

Larrabee published extensively, including a portfolio produced for the book, Cry, the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1948).

Royal visit of King George VI (in the white uniform) and Queen Elizabeth to Lesotho, 
1947, EEPA 1998-062832

  

In 1949 Larrabee married Colonel Sterling Larrabee and moved to Chestertown, Maryland, where she focused on photographing the coastal regions of New England and supporting the arts program of Washington College, ultimately establishing the Constance Stuart Larrabee Arts Center.  Her work was shown in major exhibitions including "The Family of Man" at the Museum of Modern Art, 1955; "Tribal Photographs" at the Corcoran Art Gallery, 1984; and "Go Well, My Child" at the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA), 1986.  

Larrabee passed away in 2000, leaving her photographic collection to the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives.  We hope that you enjoy her photographs as more are posted online.  You can view the collection's finding aid and explore her photographs here. 

Ndebele woman with hand over mouth, South Africa, circa 1936-1949, EEPA 1998-060339

Funding for the processing and digitization of Larrabee’s photographic collection has been provided by the Constance Stuart Larrabee Endowment, National Museum of African Art.

To obtain high-resolution images and permission for publication or exhibition, please contact the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art.

Eden Orelove, Photo Archivist
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art

Pioneering Women Photographers in Africa, 1930s-1970s

We are excited to announce a major project the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, is starting: In support of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, we will be digitizing and describing 14 collections created by women photographers in Africa! All of the women photographers were trailblazers in their respective fields and professions – art, anthropology, architecture, art history, geography, photojournalism, travel – and used photography as a tool for documentation, ethnographic field research, or ‘salvage photography’ to produce fleeting glimpses of what were perceived as rapidly ‘vanishing’ cultures and ways of life. These women exercised different cultural and social sensitivities when it came to photographing indigenous peoples in local and domestic settings.

These photographic collections include field expeditions by Marie Louis Bastin (Angola); Constance Stuart Larrabee (South Africa); Barbara Blackmun (Benin, Nigeria); Jean Borgatti (Northern Nigeria); Christraud Geary (Cameroon, Senegal); Marilyn Heldman (Ethiopia, Nigeria); Marilyn Houlberg (Nigeria, Haiti); Aylette Jenness (Northern Nigeria); Natalie Knight and Suzanne Priebatsch (South Africa) Betty LaDuke (Ethiopia, Eritrea); Lynn McLaren (Kenya, Tanzania); Eva Meyerowitz (Republic of Benin; Ghana); Marvin Breckinridge Patterson (Cape Town to Cairo trip); and Marli Shamir (Djenne and Timbuktu, Mali). Through the cataloging of these collections, we hope to inform the narrative of women’s history, address historical gaps in African photography, and advance dialogues about gender, power relations, and other understudied but crucial topics.

Each month we will feature a different woman from the project. Stay tuned – in November we will explore the life and photographs of Constance Stuart Larrabee!

Constance Stuart Larrabee and friend photographing among Ndebele women, 

near Pretoria, South Africa, 1936

Eden Orelove, Photo Archivist
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art

Omo: Expressions of a People, Photographs by Drew Doggett

Finding Aid Now Available at the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives

Omo aims to help viewers gain a greater visual understanding of the creative expressions of traditional peoples in Ethiopia and beyond, and subsequently encourage an appreciation of the world’s cultural diversity – one that develops into a genuine shared humanity. 

-Drew Doggett

EEPA 2015-009-0002: Untitled 2, Karo Tribeswoman with Pierced Lip, Wearing Necklaces, Karo Village, Omo Valley, Ethiopia 

Twenty of Drew Doggett's visually arresting black and white photos are now open for research at the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives (EEPA), National Museum of African Art. This vibrant collection documents the indigenous people of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, including the Suri, Hamar, Dhassanac and Karo peoples. Taken in February 2011, the photos were used in Doggett's series, Omo: Expressions of a People (2012). 

EEPA 2015-009-0001: Untitled 1, Suri Boy Surveying his Cattle, Suri Village, Omo Valley, Ethiopia

Emphasizing the roles of art and creativity in traditional cultures, Doggett depicts body decorations and adornments, including headdresses, ear plates, necklaces, loin coverings, body painting and scarification and lip piercings. There are also several photographs of village scenes, cattle herding and rites of ceremonies, particularly the Hamar peoples' Jumping of the Bulls.

Take a look for yourself at the EEPA’s finding aid to learn more about Doggett’s vision and artwork.

EEPA 2015-009-0015: Untitled 37, Karo Boy with Painted Face, Karo Village, Omo Valley, Ethiopia

Biography of Drew Doggett:

Photographer and filmmaker Drew Doggett (b. 1984 in Maryland) received his BA from Vanderbilt University (2006), majoring in Human & Organization Development. In addition to working from 2006-2012 under prominent fashion and portrait photographers, including Steven Klein, Annie Leibovitz, Mark Seliger, Ruven Afanador and Craig McDean, Doggett has photographed remote regions in the Himalayas, Africa, France, Canada, and other areas. Solo exhibitions include Slow Road to China (2010-2011), Omo: Expressions of a People (2012), Discovering the Horses of Sable Island (2013), Dunes: Landscapes Evolving (2014-2015) and Sail: Majesty at Sea (2015). His work has garnered awards at the Px3 Prix de la Photographie Paris (2014, 1st place in Culture Photography category), Px3 White Color Trilogy Photography Competition (2015, 2nd place in Nature category) and the Nikon Photo Contest (2015, 3rd prize for the film Dunes: Abstract Expressions). In 2016 he was honored as an Associate from the Royal Photographic Society. His work is held in private collections globally and is also in the permanent collections of several museums.

For more information about Drew Doggett, see his website. 

EEPA 2015-009-0008: Untitled 21, Dhassanac Woman Holding Tree Branches in Village near Omorate,
Dhassanac Village, Omo Valley, Ethiopia

Accessing the Collection:

Drew Doggett is the owner of copyright and other intellectual properties of this collection. Permission to reproduce images requires written consent from Drew Doggett. Any commercial exploitation of any of the works in the collection that include a person identifiable in the work is explicitly prohibited unless Drew Doggett grants a publicity release. Contact the Archives staff at elisofonarchives@si.edu for more details.

To make an appointment at the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, please email elisofonarchives@si.edu. Our research hours are Monday through Thursday, 10 AM to 4 PM.

Eden Orelove, Photo Archivist
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art