I try to put down a marker against the fashion mumbo-jumbo of our consumer culture, that only reinforces disempowerment and alienates us from the world.
But there’s another type of fashion. Vivid adornment that celebrates the relationship of man and the living world around. Hans Silvester found it in the Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia. The Surma and Mursi tribes paint their bodies with natural pigments made from the earth. They paint themselves and each other in a tradition that has remained unchanged for millenia. They use their bodies as canvases, painting their skin with pigments made from powdered volcanic rock and adorning themselves with materials obtained from flowers, leaves, grasses, shells and animal horns.
