In general, those of us who are fascinated by the past are drawn to the permanent structures, the ruins that last generations, the long-lasting monuments to past glories. Isn't that true? I mean, sure, we professionals work in the destroyed remnants most of the time, but the preservation ethic is instilled in many of us pretty deeply, and so the ephemeral is looked upon with sadness and loss. But there is a traditional ephemeral architecture in the countries of West Africa, built of perishable fired mud brick or adobes and fated to melt away over the years, and captured only in photographs. A traveling exhibit of photos of these structures is currently at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and when I saw the photos, I was stunned by their beauty. For centuries, complex adobe structures, many of them quite massive, have been built in the Sahal region of western Africa, including the countries of Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. Made of earth mixed with water, these ephemeral buildings display a remarkable diversity of form, human ingenuity, and originality. British photographer James Morris offers a stunning visual survey of these structures, from monumental mosques to family homes, in a traveling exhibition of 50 photographs, organized and toured by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions (CATE), Pasadena, California. The exhibition will run between December 9, 2006 through March 3, 2007 in the 1st floor Merle-Smith Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
The photograph in this blog is one of the fifty photos in the exhibit, and a few others were passed along to me so that you can enjoy them in the slide show feature called Adobes of West Africa. Morris's work also appears in a 2003 book co-authored with Africanist Suzanne Preston Blier.
- Adobes of West Africa, a slide show of four of the Morris photographs
- Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, Photographs of James Morris, exhibition notice at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
- Mud, Glorious Mud (Jonathan Glancey in the Guardian reviews the book)
- Architectural Traditions of Mali, an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution
- Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions (CATE)
- Butabu: Adobe Architecture of West Africa, where you can buy the book by Morris and Blier
- Butabu on Archnet (that's ArchitectureNet, where you can find even more of Morris's photographs)
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