Hans Silvester : « …and your beauty blows my mind… »

With this exhibition Hans Silvester takes us in the intimacy of the women of the Hamer tribe in southern Ethiopia.

Their names are : Dina, Kaja, Asi, Sendara.....They build their huts, cultivate the fields, cook, and look after the children. They wear a small loincloth made of animal skin or cloth, which they buy at the weekly market in the neighboring town, and take great care of their adornments, sculpting their hairstyle, these fine braids coated with bright ochre.
They wear the conjugal ring around their necks: two metal rings that they will never leave. The first wife wears a third ring, made of vegetal material surrounded by antelope skin, decorated with a kind of phallic rod as a pendant.

It is the father of the young man who negotiates the purchase of the first woman: 2 kalachinikovs, 25 goats and 5 cows. Once the deal is done, the girl is taken to a hut where she will stay for three months in the shade, her body coated with fat and ochre to make her skin as soft as possible. At the same time she is fed to become plump (she gains about 10 kilos) and instructed on what will happen on the wedding night and what she must do to please her husband.

In summer, while the men make the transhumance with their goats, the women guard the goat kids in the village. They take turns spending the night perched on a tree in the middle of the plantation, armed with a slingshot to keep thieves and particularly voracious monkeys away.

Hans has had the good idea to pitch his tent in the heart of these families who welcomed him with great sympathy. The result of his reportage takes us into a world of softness and natural elegance. These charming images give us an idyllic vision of "paradise" in a huge country undergoing extraordinary economic and social change.

Born in Germany in 1938 and living in Provence since 1962, Hans Silvester has never ceased to demonstrate, in his work, his commitment to ecology.
Along his 65-year career, he has travelled the world and produced animal and humanitarian reports for the international press.
His photographs are regularly exhibited in France and abroad and are included in institutional and private collections.
He is the author of about twenty books.
His work over the last fifteen years on the peoples of the Omo Valley has given rise to several books and earned him the Eurazeo Prize in 2014.