In January 2012, with careful planning and connections, they visited remote places in Ethiopia, focusing on the peoples of the Omo River Valley. The year before they photographed the Royal Kuba Kingdom as guests of the Royal family in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This little visited Kingdom is renowned for its exquisite raffia textiles, traditional palace and magnificent costumes worn during rituals in the Royal Court.

Angela and Carol met in Kenya thirty–five years ago. Their unique acclaimed images covering 150 African cultures were made on journeys of 270,000 miles throughout the African continent. As young female explorers, they saw Africa through the eyes of the people they lived with, photographing each group meticulously, from their body adornment to their ritual passages through life. Each image tells a story of the lives of the men, women and children within the vibrant traditions of these cultures.

Their extraordinary photographs are recorded in fourteen best–selling books and in their films. Their new book “Painted Bodies” (2012) follows “Maasai” (1980), “Nomads of Niger” (1983), “Africa Adorned” (1984), “African Ark” (1990), “African Ceremonies” (1999), “Passages” (2000), “Faces of Africa” (2004), “Lamu: Kenya’s Enchanted Island” (2009), and “Dinka” (2010). The special limited–edition books, hand printed in Santiago, Chile, are titled “Surma,” “Karo,” “Maasai,” and “Dinka.”

“African Ceremonies,” their defining body of work published twelve years ago, is a double volume that sold close to one hundred thousand copies. It is a pan–African study of rituals and rites of passage from birth to death, covering 93 ceremonies from 26 countries. This book won the United Nations Award for Excellence for “vision and understanding of the role of cultural traditions in the pursuit of world peace.”

Honored twice with the Annisfield–Wolf Book Award in race relations for “outstanding contributions to the understanding of cultural diversity and prejudice,” Angela and Carol are also winners of the Royal Geographical Society of London’s Cherry Kearton Medal for their contribution to the photographic recording of African ethnography and ritual.

The photographers have made four films about traditional Africa, including Way of the Wodaabe (1986), The Painter and the Fighter, and two programs for the Millennium Series Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World. Numerous exhibitions of their photography and films have been shown in museums and galleries around the world. In 2000 their Passages exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art featuring 97 mural photographs, six video films and a selection of African masks, sculpture and jewelry. This exhibition travelled to seven museums on three continents.

“Beckwith and Fisher have done more than anyone to awaken the world’s appreciation of everything African, from adornment to the rapidly vanishing ceremonies,” says Peter C. Keller PHD, President of the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana.

In the words of Dr. Donald Johanson, Director, Institute of Human Origins, “Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher are not only truly remarkable photographers, but their dedication to preserving for all time the dazzling diversity of African ceremonies is unparalleled. Their celebrations of African cultures will forever serve as the most compelling and passionate portrayal of the splendor of human creativity from the very continent that gave rise to all humanity.”