Tsemai Tattoo II
Returning the photographer's gaze - sometimes with a proud and knowing smile, an indignant look of resistance and mimicry, or a long studied stare as the observer becomes the observed. The gaze is returned, the observer othered. Subject owns the gaze for a frozen moment.
Young Tsemai woman with tattooed facial markings at the weekly market in Key Afer, a small multi-ethnic frontier town in the remote lower Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia. Shot near the end of a long hot dry season regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade.
The Tsemai are one of the least known ethnic groups in the valley, numbering around 5000 people concentrated in settlements along the west bank of the Weito River, a tributary to the larger life-sustaining Omo River that carves and winds its way south through the greater Rift Valley floor of Ethiopia's Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region.
© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved
Documentary Portraiture | National Geographic | BodyArt
Ethiopia - Flickr Top photos of 2016
Tsemai Tattoo II
Returning the photographer's gaze - sometimes with a proud and knowing smile, an indignant look of resistance and mimicry, or a long studied stare as the observer becomes the observed. The gaze is returned, the observer othered. Subject owns the gaze for a frozen moment.
Young Tsemai woman with tattooed facial markings at the weekly market in Key Afer, a small multi-ethnic frontier town in the remote lower Omo Valley of southwestern Ethiopia. Shot near the end of a long hot dry season regularly exceeding 40°C in the shade.
The Tsemai are one of the least known ethnic groups in the valley, numbering around 5000 people concentrated in settlements along the west bank of the Weito River, a tributary to the larger life-sustaining Omo River that carves and winds its way south through the greater Rift Valley floor of Ethiopia's Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region.
© All rights to these photos and descriptions are reserved
Documentary Portraiture | National Geographic | BodyArt
Ethiopia - Flickr Top photos of 2016