Omo Valley Portraits
Matilde Simas is an award winning documentary photographer who has traveled extensively to bring a deeply humanistic viewpoint to difficult subjects like sexual trafficking and forced marriage. Since joining the Limb Kind Foundation as staff photographer in 2018, she has traveled extensively in Africa, covering their mission to bring prosthetic limbs to victims of trauma and war.
In the spring of 2022, after an assignment with Limb Kind, she traveled with an interpreter to the Omo Valley in Southwest Ethiopia to photograph the extraordinary self decoration of the local tribes. From her tent by the Omo River she gradually eased her way into their daily routines and captured these simple, yet elegant, portraits.
There are a number of tribes inhabiting this area, including the Suri, Arbore, Hamer, and Nyangatom people. All of these tribes are under pressure from conflict and environmental changes, but also pressure to modernize from the Ethiopian government. These pressures have begun changing attitudes toward tribal ways of life like dress and wearing lip plates, and all of these tribes are struggling to maintain cultural identity as many young people strive to become more modern.
Creating a visual record of the practices was a primary motive for Matilde, and from her camp by the river she watched daily as women and children ground rocks and flowers to make face paint and decorate each other. In each portrait body art you can find colorful design elements of lines, shapes, colors, and textures through props, and accessories. Through the use of natural lighting effects you can feel the harmony, balance, unity, emphasis, and rhythm of the overall portrait.
In this series, people of the Southern Nations showcase intricate floral headpieces, face paint, scarification and lower lip plates that are worn proudly as a sign of commitment to marriage. This self decoration and tribal regalia is used to demonstrate status and tribal identity, and all of these practices are threatened with extinction as change moves inexorably towards the Omo Valley.