Afrika without Borders
The incomparable images of the American photographer George Steinmetz
At age 21, George Steinmetz hitchhiked with truck drivers through the Sahara. He kept wondering what the landscape must look like from the air. That was 1979. Hoboing through Africa, he took pictures and sent the undeveloped film home to his mother in California in exchange for shirts and pants. Africans often felt sympathy for the tall, blond stranger and took him in. He regularly spent the night in police outposts. After hooking up with a Belgian anthropologist, he traveled with her for several months in West Africa. He crossed civil war zones, lived with pygmies, sailed up the Congo, and learned a thing or two about amoebic dysentery. Few people have experienced the African continent from such close range.
Today – several trips later – Steinmetz is an internationally renowned photographer working for GEO and National Geographic. His specialty is aerial photography from motorized paragliders. The tiny parachute he travels with weighs only 90 pounds and enables him to fly slowly at low altitude over remote areas – over deserts, marshes, and mountains. In the course of those flights, he recorded hundreds of breathtaking bird’s-eye views that are now introduced to the German public for the first time in book form. The author sums up: “Africa has something magical – its sounds and smells, the wonderful optimism of its people, and of course the unique beauty and scale of its landscapes.”
Turning the pages of the book, you start to wonder whether Steinmetz ever landed. From on high, with the stunning beauty of our world laid out for all to see, the cruelty of life below vanishes into nothingness. But Steinmetz’s pictures can absorb that irony: The never-ending beauty of Africa inspires readers to approach the continent with astonishment and humility. A panopticum of unusual perspectives: vegetable gardens in Timbuktu, tea plantations in Kenya, sand dunes in Namibia, terraced fields in Rwanda, forested swamps in Nigeria, rock formations in Mali. The most beautiful photographs from 14 countries, and a document of Africa’s extraordinary cultural diversity. The Africa book of the year!
Text by Peter Felixberger
George Steinmetz:
African Air.
190 color illustrations, 208 pages.
Abrams, London 2008.
£ 19.99
ISBN 0-8109-8403-2
