With Mariantonietta Peru’s photography, there are no shades of grey. Her signature black and white images of traditional peoples and wilderness landscapes are at once arresting and sentimental. “Through photographs I express my feelings for people and nature,” says Peru.
A collection of her photographs is currently on display as the African Nomad exhibition at the Tribal Gallery, Nairobi, which specialises in antiques and art. It features 30 images taken by the photo-artist during her many travels across Africa. Tribal Gallery’s director, Louise Patterson, was excited to show Peru’s works because they are, “achingly beautiful images full of soul and incredible stories to tell.”
A piece that Peru describes as one of her favourites, is a family photograph showing three generations of Rendille women from northern Kenya, adorned in beaded jewellery. But the masterpiece of the show surely must be Beja Girl, a life-size portrait of a woman from eastern Sudan, clothed head to toe in a dark, flowing dress and carrying household pots. So graceful is her silhouette and posture as she walks in the desert, that it’s hard to believe the woman wasn’t trained for the catwalk.
Monochrome photography has a special way of capturing light and mood. “With photojournalism maybe colour is more popular, but I think black and white, especially when you concentrate on portraits, is much more dramatic,” explains the petite photo-artist who was born in Italy and lives in Kenya. “I always loved black and white because it leaves no place for distraction and I think it’s much more direct than colour.”
On her interest in photographing in remote areas, Peru says, “I love doing [photographs of] nomads and traditional peoples because they still retain close contact with nature, something we have lost in our industrial lives.” Simplicity of life certainly comes out in her images of focused and uncluttered subjects.
Photography was merely a hobby for Peru until she started working with Unicef Somalia in the mid-1980s and was required to take photographs as part of her field work. It is also in Somalia where her love for far-flung areas was kindled. Two years later, she was part of a UN mission transporting relief food to isolated communities in Sudan during a drought. “The only way to reach them was by camel and I had to cover the expedition with photographs,” says Peru, who trained in Arabic at the Universities of Rome and Edinburgh. “It’s a very rich language and with my photography, it helped a lot in my relationships with the nomads, with Arab-speaking people.”
Knowledge of the language also came in handy as she trekked across the Sahara Desert on foot and by camel with her husband between 1986-87, a journey of 7,500km over nine months and using minimal technology. “In travelling by camel there is a totally different perspective you have of the world. You are in real contact with nature,” she explains.
With more than three decades of photographing experience, Peru believes there is no need for overly fancy equipment or extensive classroom training to produce amazing images. Her photographs depicting everyday cultural life and the natural world, have featured in numerous biographies, journals and coffee table books, and she has been commissioned for works by corporations and private clients.
Nevertheless, she is not trying to romanticise the sometimes harsh living conditions of nomads and remote communities. Peru believes that, “Their lives are much more fulfilled than ours. I want to be celebrating these people because we have something to learn from them.”
The exhibition runs until June 6.