Celebrating the Dinka

West met East, North met South and avant-garde met the indigenous world at San Rafael's Black Hole Studio earlier this week with well-known San Rafael-based artist Andreas Nottebohm and novelist wife, Tess, hosting legendary photographer/anthropologist/activists Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith.

The event was a dinner-reception honoring Fisher and Beckwith for their recently released book Dinka: Legendary Cattle Keepers of Sudan with proceeds going to fund various Africa-related causes supported by Fisher and Beckwith's foundations.  Published by Modern Book's Dinka is the latest in a series of multi-media projects that the Lowell Thomas Prize-winning duo have produced as a part of their ongoing quest to highlight and preserve African ethnic cultures.

Since the 1970s, they have recorded the lives and cultures of various African tribal groups endangered by the infiltration of commercial "civilization" as well as by the vicious civil wars ebbing and flowing across the African continent.

 The talk and book signing was attended by nearly 100 friends and neighbors, and included a virtual Who's Who of the local arts, science and media. These included paleontologist, Donald Johanson, discoverer of the proto-humanoid skeleton, "Lucy," artist Brian Carter, Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, Martin Muller, of San Francisco's Modernism Gallery, super-licensing agent, Manfred Mroczkowski, guitarist Reed King and others.

 Before beginning the lecture/video presentation, the London-based Fisher and Beckwith, were themselves astonished by a tour of the Black Hole Studio, the home and workshop in San Rafael's Santa Venetia district that the Nottebohm's have transformed into an art and artifact-stuffed museum/home. Black Hole may, in fact, be the best, most heterogeneous museum/studio in the area.

Andreas Nottebohm, best known for his trans-dimensional metal, light and mind-bending "painting/sculptures," has applied the same unique spatial sensibility to the Black Hole Studio. Following supper and a private showing of Nottebohm's recent work, invitees congregated in the rococo-highlighted living room where Johanson introduced Fisher and Beckwith, praising their quarter-century of work collectively and lovingly recording vanishing African ethnic life for "The National Geographic Magazine" and other publications. Both Beckwith and Fisher are gifted photographers who have captured the sensuous, startling and often-haunting imagery and customs of African ethnic life.

 Fisher and Beckwith, who can complete each other's sentences, began by giving a moving account of their time among the Dinka and other ethnic groups across Africa. Illustrated by gorgeous photographic images of face and body painting, the two also painted word pictures of a gentle people who have supported an eon's-old culture that has prospered by herding, breeding and trading cattle and camels, before the 30-year-old civil war in Sudan upended lives and customs. 

Beckwith and Fisher have done more than take National Geographic-quality photos, however. They have also been able to gain unprecedented access to ethnic cultures by living among those tribes for months at a time and winning the ongoing trust and affection of elders and youngsters, men and women, alike. Folding themselves into tribal life, the two women have been able to record scores of colorful, powerful rites, including coming of age, marriage and fertility ceremonies to which few outsiders have been invited, let alone allowed to photograph and record.

Beckwith and Fisher have in turn, dedicated much time and effort to aid such African war-related causes as "the Lost Boys of the Sudan." Talking about their own first meetings, Beckwith, originally a Bostonian, and Fisher, from Adelaide, Australia, had similar stories about leaving home as teenagers, travelling the world and then discovering Africa and each other.

"Once bitten by the African bug," Fisher noted, "it was impossible to resist."

Although they live in London, Beckwith admits that "Africa really is our home."  The two also collectively discovered their calling, according to Beckwith, to "preserve our human history," from the social cancer of "modernism" eating away at indigenous African cultures.

Beckwith noted the stark reality that "40 percent of what we have studied over the years, no longer exist."

During their presentation, the two admitted that the pull of modern life was basically unstoppable, and that the ongoing war in the Southern Sudan had made it difficult not to trade in herding staffs for AK-47s. Yet, they also suggested that there were causes for optimism. In response to a question about the inevitable dilution of tribal life, Fisher told a story about a Dinka elder whom they wanted to honor by asking what equipment or programs he thought might be useful in supporting support tribal life and customs.

The response was a remarkable mix of old and new. He suggested that it would be highly useful to school a member of the tribe in the area of conflict resolution.

Working to preserve what Fisher calls "a lost window in time," the two are working to raise funds to digitize and find a permanent home for a body of work that includes over half-million photographs, hundreds of illustrated journals and other artifacts. To complete and their life's work, Beckwith Fisher have brought out a special, leather-bound edition of "DINKA," on sale for $1,250 as well as exhibiting and selling various of their iconic images at the Modern Book Gallery in San Francisco through Nov. 27.