Signed, Hans Silvester - Les Habits de la Nature - 2007

Exceptionally signed copy beside the title page by Hans Silvester (born 1938), unique and unattainable in a signed edition. Original edition has become rare even unsigned (do not confuse with the 2013 reissue). 168 pages and about 150 color photographs, most full-page, with an introductory text by Hans Silvester titled "The Art of the Body." Sturdy brown hardcover binding with the title debossed in yellow on the spine and an illustrated dust jacket.

To view the photographic series in full screen, double-click on a photograph, then you can return to the standard display at any time.

Between 2002 and 2007, Hans Silvester undertook more than a dozen successive trips to this part of East Africa, the cradle of humanity, and the books he produced from these photographic campaigns are all different.

Of all his journeys in the Omo Valley (Ethiopia), Hans Silvester brought back images of breathtaking beauty that exalt the art of body painting and the natural adornments of the Omo peoples.

This book is not a reportage but a poem in images whose theme is man in a state of nature and within nature. The desire to beautify oneself, to change reality into a game of seduction, is at the heart of these photographs. Here a whitened face or a bosom strewn with stars, there a painted torso or a head crowned with grass. In response to the profusion of colors and the diversity of motifs, nature responds with abundance: twigs, bark, fruits, flowers or seeds—everything is material to dress, decorate, and magnify the bodies. Far from our modern world, in the lands of the Mursi and Surma in Ethiopia, adornments, captured in all their freshness and originality by Hans Silvester’s talent, are an important element of life.

These paintings bear witness to complete freedom of creation and there is never any repetition. If one must find a reference to these body paintings, it is in the expression of a certain mimicry with nature, with animals as Hans Silvester writes.

Hans Silvester was born in 1938 in Lörrach in southern Germany near the Swiss border, and he lives in Provence, France, a region to which he has also dedicated numerous books. Among his favored themes are ecology and the defense of the planet. He is worldwide renowned for his long-term work with the tribes of southern Ethiopia—the Omo peoples—documenting their ancestral customs just before civilization caught up with them. In 2022, Hans Silvester was awarded the Albert Kahn Prize for his body of work.

Book from my personal collection, in excellent condition (like new), carefully preserved. Shipping protected very effectively and international tracking guaranteed. For multiple purchases, possible group shipping with refund of excess postage paid via PayPal.

1.5 kg. excluding packaging.