вторник, 13 марта 2012 г.

Challenging Clichés

Challenging Clich�s Dogon: People of the Cliffs (Imago Mundi series) Introduction by Genevi�ve Calame-Griaule, photographs by Agn�s Pataux 5 Continents Editions, September 2003 $29.95, ISBN 8-874-39055-6

The mere simplicity and elegance of this book is a tribute to the people whose story it captures. To keep the focus on the photographs, a minimum of prose is used on the book flaps to identify its creators and in the Introduction by Genevi�ve Calame-Griaule, who has written several books on African oral literature. In a few pages, she reverently details the spiritual history of this ancient, animist culture of cliff dwellers whose very name alludes to their powers of survival.

Then the starkly penetrating, unflinching eyes of the Dogon people stare at us from razor-sharp, black-and-white prints, as they must have gazed at Agn�s Pataux, the trusted white storyteller with the camera. Most of her photographs are of the people: an engaging child, a smiling elder or a young mother breast-feeding a baby. Captions are also minimal, just a name, maybe a word or two, so as not to detract from the images.

Other photographs capture their pueblolike villages or the moonscape of a land in Mali that the Dogon have called home since their ancestors sought the high ground long ago to escape warring neighbors. More familiar images of the much-studied Dogon conducting ceremonies or even carrying out their work are deliberately absent.

"Clich�d images of women pounding, blacksmiths forging and healers healing are banished," writes Calame-Griaule. It forces us to look at the individuals for who they are, barring the possibility of judging them for what they are doing, as one might in some stereotypical treatments of African cultures.

That seems to be what the photographer has intended. Pataux, who has shown her work in France, Italy and Ireland, is the author of the well-received Ireland: On the Edge of Europe, also from 5 Continents, an Italian publisher of fine art books. She became enchanted by Africa when her family moved to Senegal decades ago so her parents could teach and study art.

[Author Affiliation]

-Reviewed by Angela P. Dodson

Angela P. Dodson, executive editor of Black Issues Book Review, collects art, including African pieces.

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