NDEBELE: The Art of an African Tribe

Rizzoli 1986
Thames & Hudson 2002 / ISBN 0-500-28387-7
Frederking & Thaler, Munich, 1986 / ISBN 3-89405-516-2
Holland, 2003 / ISBN 90-5764-278-6
Flammarion / Arthaud, 2003 / F2 0093-02-x
Südafrica: Die Kunst der Ndebele Frauer / 3-8405-516-2

AFRICAN CANVAS

Rizzoli, N.Y., 1991 / ISBN 0-8478-1166-2
(Currently only available through the Schomberg Center (NYPL) New York Tel. (212) 491.2200)
Frederking & Thaler, Munich, 1991

IMAZIGHEN:The Vanishing Traditions of Berber Women

Clarkson Potter, N.Y., 1996
Thames & Hudson, London, 1996
Frederking & Thaler, Munich, 1996

KOFI AND HIS MAGIC

Crown Publishers, N.Y., 1996
ISBN 0-517-70453-6

MY PAINTED HOUSE, MY FRIENDLY CHICKEN AND ME

Crown Publishers, N.Y., 1994
ISBN 0-517-59667-9

PLACES IN THE SAND

Monacelli Press, N.Y., 1997
ISBN 1-885254-76-8

THE POETRY OF LIVING: MAYA ANGELOU

Clarkson Potter N.Y., 2001 / ISBN 0-609-60458-9
Time Warner Books (Virago), U.K., 2001

The art of Africa is known as a casualty of colonial exploitation, surviving principally in the museums of other continents, never seen by the people who created it. What reappears among African artists today is regarded as a renaissance of a destroyed tradition.
Margaret Courtney-Clarke book is a revelation not of that renaissance but of a glorious continued existence, under the most destructive forms of physical and psychological hardship imaginable, of an artistic culture at the very center of life itself. The art of the Ndebele women is uniquely rooted in that guardianship; its canvas is the shrine of the home, where children are conceived and reared and family life is housed in the spirit. The beauty of this book is unsurpassed in its combination of content and meaning. Its art is also the art of life.

“These magnificent photographs help me to see how beautiful I am and in fact they help me to see that wherever it is to be found, the human spirit is beautiful, creative, innovative, resilient, and here to stay”
Maya Angelou

“A revelation…The beauty of this book unsurpassed in its combination of content and meaning. Its art is also the art of life”
Nadine Gordimer

Far from the influences of the Western world, there are peoples of West Africa who still live in the traditional way – a way of life passed from one generation to the next. In these remote areas distinct building traditions have produced visually striking vernacular architecture and decoration. Each year after the harvest, West African women gather to restore and paint their hands as brushes and the walls as their canvas, the women set about creating an art whose composition, technique, and treatment of color is as dynamic as that of any Western painting. Enhancing an otherwise harsh landscape, the art form is purely indigenous, from the mud used to build the walls to the natural earth pigments and plants gathered to make the colors. The motifs and patterns that adorn the walls are a reflection of the lives of these women, illustrating their communal spirit and how they see the world around them.
African Canvas provides a glimpse into the homes of these very proud and dignified people. Over a period of three years, photojournalist Margaret Courtney-Clarke traveled through Nigeria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mauritania and Mali. The paths she chose were not easily accessible and the risks taken were often life-threatening, but the rewards are self-evident. She was allowed to enter the worlds of diverse ethnic to document the various painted arts: the walls, pottery, and painted cloth.
Often lasting but a season, the painted walls are not transportable and will not be found in museums and galleries. This book offers testament to this noble art, and to the artists and their lifestyle which gradually is merging with that of the West, soon to disappear forever.

In a part of North Africa where miles, the backdrop can change dramatically from snow-blasted mountains to wind-scoured dunes live the Berber people of the Atlas Mountains. In the third book of her trilogy on African women, world-renowned photojournalist Margaret Courtney-Clarke examines the difficult lives and modern warfare in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia have encroached on their centuries-old traditions, Berber women have begun to give up the old ways. Imazighen: The Vanishing Traditions of Berber Women is a record of a quickly disappearing way of life.
As in her earlier books, Ndebele: The Art of an African Canvas: The Art of West African Women, Courtney-Clarke succeeds in capturing the spirit of the women by experiencing their world from season to season and by respecting their values and traditions. Through photographs, interviews, and observations, Courtney-Clarke documents the Berber women as they stoically carry water and firewood on their backs for miles of rocky terrain. And she records the beauty they have magically produced in their lives – through their spinning and weaving and their carefully coiled pottery – a metaphor for survival and creativity.
Geraldine Brooks, award-winning journalist and an expert on life in the Middle East, accompanied Courtney-Clarke on her last trip to North Africa, and has written moving, thoughtful essays on the struggle of existence among the Berbers. With a glossary of Berber terms and a detailed map of the region, this book is not only a handsomely illustrated volume of the triumph of the arts of the Berber women, but a dramatic record of a people yielding to the pressures of the twentieth century.

Author Maya Angelou and photographer Margaret Courtney-Clarke collaborate once again to share the story of a boy named Kofi from the West African town of Bonwire, known worldwide for its beatifully woven Kente cloth. Join Kofi as he uses his magic-powered by his imagination-to journey to neighboring towns to see different people and awe-inspiring sights.

Meet Kofi, a seven-year-old West African boy who learns how to weave by wiggling strings tied to his toes, “a little like riding a bicycle”. This is how he and his friends create the beautifully colored Kente cloth for which his town, Bonwire, is famous throughout the world. Kofi is not only a weaver, though; he is also a magician. By closing his eyes and opening his mind he calls on the magic of travel, visiting many places such as the Ashanti capital and northern Ghana; his school; the ocean; and a festival-a Durbar-where women priests and wise men draped in rich Kente and gold parade throughout the village.

New soft cover edition, 2003

My photographs portray these places, my special places, places in the sand drenched with light and modeled by wind, where survival depends upon a drop of rain that may fall, or may not. In the sinuous dunes, my eye reads memories – memories less of place than of the emotions etched by desert places.
Margaret Courtney-Clarke

TRAVELLING THOUSANDS OF MILES across vast deserts, Margaret Courtney-Clarke has photographed the remote and seldom-seen landscapes of Africa’s magnificent and delicate environment, where nature wages an ongoing struggle to survive. Places in the Sand portrays unfolding dunes blown constantly by the wind, dreamlike roads that lead nowhere, the fragile cracked ground stretching endlessly toward the horizon.
Born and raised on a ranch at the edge of the Namib Desert, Courtney-Clarke’s photographic work reflects an extraordinary blend of sophisticated European and ancient African cultures as well as an innate love for and instinctive understanding of the eternal beauty of the land.
Her award-winning books include the trilogy Ndebele: The Art of an African Tribe, African Canvas: The Art of West African Women, and Imazighen: The Vanishing Traditions of Berber Women.
In Places in the Sand, she turns a nostalgic and knowing eye to the landscape, creating evocative slivers of panoramas in which earth touches sky, poetic images of abandoned shacks engulfed by sand and time, and jewel-like shots framing textures, majestic colors, and forms. “Only memories have survived in the silence of the desert All the rest of this is gone,” writes Courtney-Clarke of the beloved desert of her childhood. In Places in the Sand, memories are resurrected into timelessness.

As an author, poet, actress, director, and civic leader, Maya Angelou has had a profound influence on the lives of millions around the world. Closer to home, she has also profoundly influenced her many friend and family members – by counseling, encouraging, praising, and exhorting, and not least, teaching by example. One of Courtney-Clarke, offers a tribute in these pages-moving and revealing portraits of her friend. Taken over the course of a year, at bookstore signings, on stage, and at home, Courtney-Clarke’s photographs both celebrate and illuminate one the great figures of our time.
Supporting the visual story are thoughts on Angelou’s powers of friendship as interpreted by her friends, in chapters that highlight the poet’s virtues – Joy, Giving, Learning, Perseverance, Creativity, Courage, Self-Respect, Spirituality, Love, and Taking Risks. Among those represented here, all of whom count Dr. Angelou as one of the most important persons in their lives, are leaders Coretta Scott King, Reverend Barbara King, and Andrew Young; singers Ashford and Simpson; and Dr. Angelou’s son, the writer Guy Johnson. And in her touching foreword, Oprah Winfrey describes how Dr. Angelou came to be her “counsel, consultant, advisor, shoulder to cry on, Rock, Shield, Protector, Defender, Mama Bear, and Mother-Sister-Friend.”
Maya Angelou’s strength in the face of a difficult life, her concern for others, and the singular artistry of her writings give guidance to all who seek their own spiritual way in the world. In Courtney-Clarke’s photographs and in the words of Dr. Angelou’s closest friends, the true wisdom of her spirit emerges.

In her thirty years as a photographer, MARGARET COURTNEY-CLARKE has produced countless magazine stories and seven books. Born in Namibia in Southern Africa she has focused much of her work on African people, architecture, and land-scapes. She first met Maya Angelou while working on African Canvas: The Art of west African Women (1987), for which Dr. Angelou later collaborated on the children’s books My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me and Kofi and His Magic. Courtney-Clarke lives in Italy.