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Mursi
Published: 2012-01-19 02:33:17 +0000 UTC; Views: 15820; Favourites: 712; Downloads: 133
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Description
Photo by Dmitri Markine Photography www.dmitrimarkine.comMursi woman with a child.Taken at their village in Ethiopia.
They cut their bottom lip at around puberty and install a clay disk. With time the size of the disk increases. It's believed the tradition started by Mursi tribe to avoid other tribes stealing their women. Basically, they tried to make them look ugly for others. Nowadays it's considered a beautification.
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Comments: 148
That's a really fascinating image. I wonder how they eat like that.
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"they tried to make them look ugly for others"
Well, I have to admit they did a damn good job. Traveling to some parts of Africa must feel like traveling back to the stone age.
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Hello!
You've been featured here : [link]
Thanks for sharing!
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Hope you don't mind me sahring this piece on pinterest. It's a photo with a lot of charges behind it.
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Yes, of course, you can share it outside of deviantart, as long as a credit is given --> ( www.dmitrimarkine.com )
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this makes me feel uncomfortable... but great art often does.
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This piece tell a little story. The greyscales and the bokeh are very, very good. Congratulations for this very well deserved DD!
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Thank you for your support everyone. We live in a unique world and I am happy to had/have a chance to explore it
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I'm quite glad that it finally won a DD. DA staff didn't hear me when I suggested it on February 2012.
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?? wow...?? How do you kiss or do you kiss??? great photo BTW and congrats on the DD
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This looks horrific to do to the human body. How do they even eat just wondering. I think its one thing to have cultural beliefs and views but to self injure like this seems frightening to me.
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Go here for a video on how an African tribal woman (as depicted in this image) attempts to drink a gourd filled with water with a lip plate ... and as a special bonus, you get to watch her smoke a pipe with TWO lip plates in her mouth - both upper AND lower lips):
Not for the faint of heart / queasy: [link]
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They remove the lip plate when eating / drinking.
The lower lip just hangs loose like her earlobes do.
Kind of like having a plump earthworm attached to one's lower lip ... but stretched out.
And this is of course, a modern primitive body modification "fad" here in Western society.
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I can't find the words to describe how beautiful it is
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You'd need beer goggles and an eye-patch to hit that.
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Wow, I just burst when I read this.
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Sorry to be blunt xD Glad I cold make someone laugh anyway.
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Aw, no problem.
It think that clay-to-the-faic is a stupid idea anyway.
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Eh, the original idea of making yourself ugly to prevent being kidnapped is like making crappy art to keep art thieves away; sure, you get the job done, but you're still making crappy art.
(No relation here to the guy who posted this, his photography is awesome.)
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Yes, that was a brilliant way of summing it up.
And of course, no relation. The DD was well deserved.
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Not in uncultivated Africa.
The closest thing they have is a hammer and a witch doctor.
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Very cool! It's awesome to see a breastfeeding image as a DD. I dare say that woman would kick some ass if some idget told her to cover up while nursing. And that's my daily lactivist plug, folks.
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Yuck, that looks terribly painful and gross. All the same, nice photograph and a good look at a culture we don't often see.
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beautiful picture, congrats on the DD!! I had read that they inserted the disks as a status symbol, the bigger the disk, the more gold needed to pay for the woman's hand in marriage though..
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thats what i was just wondering....
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This is a really stunning picture, but on the cultural side this seems like one of those ideas that shouldn't have been executed.
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I hear the size of the disc depends on how much livestock/ other stuff perhaps the woman has in her dowry, and therefore her desirability as a bride.
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It takes a lot of skill to capture beauty and tenderness in a subject matter that many consider to be ugly. It's not my place to judge how this woman feels about the disc in her lip or whether it's 'right' or 'wrong'. It's a different culture and I'm sure that every woman feels differently about it, just as women in the United States all feel differently about their own liberation and rights to various body modifications. I don't know this woman.
But I can say that you've captured her beautifully. To an American, it's such a fascinating mixture - a modification that I personally don't find to be attractive, a sense of balance few of us have, the strength in her arms, the indescribable expression on her face, how thoughtlessly she feeds the child, the stretched ears. She's part of an entirely different world.
It's such a stark and provocative picture. I congratulate you on the shot.
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It is very interesting, on how cultures and traditions evolve.
Even though I'm sure it probably looks tough to do anything with that, those women are probably used to it and have probably learned how to do everything with their mouths like that, so I wouldn't be to horribly worried about it.
I'm also amazed at the perfect balance of that pot on top of her head.
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Can bet that some day after tatoos, piercing, earrings etc. it will become very fashionable too in London NY or Paris...
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Wonderful shot. And I'm a big fan of black and white photos. This really is National Geographic worthy.
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