Dinka: The cattle keepers of Sudan

Dinka: The cattle keepers of Sudan in a visual ‘tome’As South Sudan continues to celebrate its Independence, I have been enjoying a thrilling photographic exhibition contained between two covers. For it seems quite inadequate to call Dinka a mere book – not even a coffee-table book. It’s more a dining-table of a tome. Legendary cattle keepers of Sudan runs the sub-title, and for page after breathtaking page we find ourselves in a dusty swirl of images as we jostle among the extraordinarily tall pastoralists from Southern Sudan (as it was called until July 9) and their devoted long-horned cattle.

It’s almost always the case that the larger an image is blown up the more spectacular it appears and the more you become absorbed in it. So when you consider that a good number of the pictures here are double page spreads of a book that’s a full one foot wide and a giant 16 inches high you can readily understand why no 3D glasses would be needed to feel yourself in among the Dinka.

The cameras that captured the rich culture and traditions of these people were held by Angela Fisher and Carol Beckwith, that hugely experienced team of photographers of traditional African societies. These two have spent three decades producing a unique collection of large-format pictorial books, including Maasai, Africa Adorned, Nomads of Niger, African Ark, and the two-volume African Ceremonies. (They’re currently working on a third and final volume, African Twilight.)

Like all great photographers — and these two are among the greatest — they do far more than point their cameras where they should. It is their engaging personalities that help them establish the warm, respectful and trusting relationships with the traditional communities whose cultures they become privileged to share, and which allow them to bring these cultures to life as they do.

Fisher and Beckwith first visited the Dinka in the late 1970s, when the war between the North and the South had not yet reached their vast cattle camps. But it soon did, with devastating effects on that peace-loving tribe. Government-sponsored militias wreaked havoc on them, with unprecedented brutality. Young boys, orphaned and with no support, made epic journeys to Ethiopia and Kenya, and not a few found their way to America where they became known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.”

Simon Akoch John, the leader of the South California Chapter of the Lost Boys of Sudan Foundation, wrote to the two authors after attending the launch of Dinka in California, thanking them for supporting their foundation. And here’s what they said about the book: “You have done what nearly seven million Dinka people could never do themselves, preserve their heritage and culture.”

As I read John’s long and lyrical letter I concluded that as a complete outsider, I could do no better than to quote further from this Dinka’s reactions to a book about his own people. He wrote that no words could adequately express his sensational joy and his unexpected nostalgia. He was stunned, he said, by the sheer joy of seeing such familiar sights, each picture telling a familiar story, his story. John loved the way Fisher and Beckwith’s pictures were pure and accurate, free of embellishment or commercial manipulation, and admired how they narrated the story that accompanied the pictures with grace, precision and accuracy. Who am I to say different?

John repeatedly thanked Fisher and Beckwith not only for their great achievement, but also for the endless hardships they had to endure in search of their images. He concluded by saying he would cherish his copy of the book, “pass it on to my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and to the world at large, a celebration of enduring love and humanity”.

Fisher and Beckwith were only able to return to South Sudan following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, and when they did they found the war had resulted in massive changes. Spears had been replaced by Kalashnikov rifles, beaded bodices and corsets by T-shirts and jeans. And now, as the benefits of modernity spread around the new nation, the Dinka’s traditional nomadic ways are likely to fade further.

Little wonder that the Lost Boy wrote what he did, and little wonder that Dinka (in its limited edition version) received first prize in the 2010 HP Indigo Digital Printing Award for the highest quality digitally printed photographic book, having competed against 450 projects from 170 countries. And the version now available here in Nairobi was proclaimed by American Photo as one of 2010’s 10 best photographic books. Take a look, and you’ll readily understand why.