• Home
• About
• Carol A. Beckwith FI ‘81 and Angela M. Fisher FI ‘95

Carol A. Beckwith FI ‘81 and Angela M. Fisher FI ‘95

For thirty years, American-born Carol Beckwith and Australian Angela Fisher have been documenting the fast-disappearing, traditional cultures of Africa. Since their original meeting in Kenya, the two photographers have travelled over 270,000 miles through forty countries and encountered more than 150 African cultures.

The photographers’ defining body of work is the double volume African Ceremonies (1999), a pan-African study of rituals and rites of passage covering ninety-three ceremonies from twenty-six countries. This won the United Nations Award for Excellence for its “vision and understanding of the role of cultural traditions in the pursuit of world peace”. Among their other universally acclaimed books are Maasai (1980), Nomads of the Niger (1983), Africa Adorned (1984), African Ark (1990), African Ceremonies (1999), Passages (2000), Faces of Africa (2004), and Lamu: Kenya’s Enchanted Island (2009). For these works Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith have been honoured with the Annisfield-Wolf Book Award in race relations, the Royal Geographical Society of London’s Cherry Kearton Medal, the Wings WorldQuest Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Spanish Geographical Society Award for Best Images of the Year.

Presently Ms. Beckwith and Ms. Fisher are preparing for the 2010 publication of Dinka, their thirty-year study of the legendary pastoralists of Southern Sudan, and completing their research on the art of body painting for a book entitled Africa: Spirit of Paint scheduled for publication in 2011. They are also working with some urgency to complete the third volume of their ongoing study of African Ceremonies, to be published in 2013 under the title African Twilight. Their goal is to cover traditional ceremonies in the thirteen African countries they have yet to visit before the ceremonies disappear.