Antoine Schneck | Mali

Photo © Antoine Schneck | All Rights Reserved

Following the recent racist vulgarities uttered by the White House resident describing African, Caribbean and South American nations (among others), I decided to feature photographs of Malians by French photographer Antoine Schneck as a riposte.

I have rarely posted about Mali on The Travel Photographer blog and for those of us who need a geographical refresher, it's a landlocked country in West Africa, and is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of just over 1,240,000 square kilometres (480,000 square miles). Its population is 18 million, and its capital is Bamako.

Setting aside its troubled recent politics, Malian music is glorious, and is derived from the griots, who are known as "Keepers of Memories". Its most well known is the late guitarist Ali Farka Touré and the Tuareg band Tinariwen, and the wonderful Fatoumata Diawara and Babani Koné.

Schneck tells us that he starts the process of his portrait-making by having the models sitting alone against a black fabric in a white fabric tent, with his camera protruding from a hole in the tent's fabric. He operates the camera from the outside, remaining invisible to the subjects. His post process further darkens the backgrounds to become pitch black, to obscure all but the models' faces. 

Aside from his Mali portraits, Schneck offers us portraits of Ethiopia (Omo Valley and Afar), India, Miao in China, Papua New Guinea, Burkina Faso and other projects.

Antoine Schneck lives in Paris. Portraiture has appealed to him from the start of his interest in photography. His work is developed in series, over the course of journeys, desires, projects, always a meeting. In 2007, Antoine Schneck went to Burkina Faso to stay in a small village, and he returned with over 300 portraits. He then went on to do series in China for photographs of the Miao and India for the Nilgiri, followed by Mali. 

For those fluent in French, here's his interview with RFI.

Carlos Duarte: Mali

Photo © Carlos Duarte-All Rights Reserved

It's been a while I haven't featured photographic work of Mali, and Carlos Duarte's work is the perfect excuse to do so.

A self-professed newcomer to photography, and one who never owned a film camera, and jumping straight into digital photography, Carlos started his craft about 6 years ago and gravitated towards social photography, portraiture and landscapes. Starting in 2007, he traveled to India then to Scotland, followed by Mali, then Iceland, Ecuador. This variety of locations resulted in diverse galleries which can be seen on his website.

Carlos added a wonderful West African song to his gallery of Mali...so you'll be well accompanied when you peruse his photographs, mostly environmental portraiture.

Mali is, of course, another country in the throes of civil unrest following a military coup and a rebellion from the Tuareg, and Islamist radicals controlling its north.  

Matjaž Krivic: Mali (& Baaba Maal!)

Here's another post on Matjaž Krivic's work. This time, it's Mali that he shares with us in this lovely audio-slideshow-movie (he calls it multivision...not a bad name.).

Matjaž just returned from an overland road trip from Slovenia to Nepal via Senegal (Dakar to Katmandu), which took him 13 months of living and photographing out of a 4x4 Nissan Patrol.

For 20 years, he globe-trotted the world capturing the personality and grandeur of indigenous people and places, and found the time to be awarded many prizes, and recognized in various venues and exhibitions. He traveled in Yemen, Mali, Tibet, North and West Africa, Iran, Mongolia, China, Nepal and India.

The spectacular music accompanying the slideshow is Dunya Salam ("world of peace") by the legendary Senegalese singer Baaba Maal. An excellent choice!

So choose full screen, turn up the volume of your speakers and enjoy the show!

Maynard Switzer: Dogon Mask Dances

Photo © Maynard Switzer -All Rights Reserved
Maynard Switzer has recently returned from Mali, where he attended and photographed a Dogon mask dance. These dances are performed at several times during the year, and serve to celebrate the start of the rainy seasons to bring about abundant rainfall, at the end of the harvest seasons to ensure plentiful crops, and also as funerary rituals to commemorate the dead.

Photo © Maynard Switzer -All Rights Reserved
The dances involve dozens of dancers representing figures from the animal world, male and female powers, and the after-world, while the masks represent spirits, women, midwives, witchdoctors, snakes, antelopes and other various representations.

Maynard tells me that the masks are made by boys as part of their coming of age. No outsider is allowed to see the dancers get dressed & put on their masks. The older men are dressed in dark blue, and are retired former dancers who train the new dancers.

Photo © Maynard Switzer -All Rights Reserved
The Dogon are an ethnic group living in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. They are best known for their mythology, their mask dances, wooden sculpture and their architecture.

Maynard Switzer was previously featured here on this blog.

Aaron Huey: Mali's Dogon Country

Photo © Aaron Huey/NY Times -All Rights Reserved
The New York Times features a slideshow of Aaron Huey's photographs of the Dogon area of Mali. The Dogon, one of Africa's most isolated ethnic groups, live in the central plateau region of Mali, south of the Niger bend near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region. The population is estimated at between 400,000 to 800,000.

The Dogon are best known for their mythology, their mask dances, wooden sculpture and their architecture. Partly because Dogon country is one of Mali's major tourist attractions, there has seen significant changes in their social structure, culture and belief system.

Joshua Hammers' accompanying article makes a great read, especially as it is spiced with passages such as this one:

"As we prowled around this Flintstones-like world, my photographer colleague wandered off alone. Suddenly I heard a burst of agitated voices, followed by the sight of the photographer, his three cameras dangling from his neck, racing down an alley with a half-dozen Dogon men close behind. He had ventured into a temple used for animal sacrifice, and his presence, as the Dogons saw it, had grievously polluted the site."

Aaron Huey's photographs are mostly of Tellem burial caves in the Bandiagara cliffs, but a few are of the Dogon people themselves. However, Aaron has a blog in which he features more of his Dogon photographs as published in the Smithsonian magazine.

Global Post: The Desert Festival

GlobalPost's mission statment is to redefine redefine international news for the digital age and states that it is relying on the enduring values of great journalism: integrity, accuracy, independence and powerful storytelling.

Here's one of its many international articles, which features a movie on the Festival du Desert held every year in Essakane, two hours from Timbuktu in Mali.

Peter DiCampo takes us there with his filming and his article, in which he writes:

"The Desert Festival is billed as one of West Africa’s greatest cultural events, featuring the haunting chants of Tuareg music wafting across the dunes in a remote spot near Timbuktu."

Horst Friedrichs: Mali

©Horst Friedrichs-All Rights Reserved
Here's a Soundlsides on Mali by Horst Friedrichs. It's in German but worth your while for the photographs even if you're a non German speaker.

Horst is photographer/photojournalist, who studied photography in Munich. He freelanced with Stern, The Independent and The New York Times in the nineties, and traveled to Venezuela, Pakistan, Mali and Japan. He produced a numner of books, among which is the well received Troubadours of Allah (what a glorious title!) depicting the Sufi singers (I tried to find his gallery on the Troubadours, but wasn't successful).

Posted by a TTP robot in London