Image of the Week: Tuareg Encampment
© D. Yael Bernhard
This illustration from A Ride On Mother's Back (Harcourt Brace, 1996) is one of my personal favorites. It shows a Tuareg family in the Sahara desert, packing their tent as they prepare to move their animals to new grazing grounds. Mother is pregnant, so her daughter carries baby brother in a cloth wrap as they load their belongings onto the camel's back. In the distance, young children race donkeys near the watering hole.
I've flown over the Sahara several times, gazing down at the ever-changing textured expanses of what looks like the skin of the earth, etched by the wind, baked by the sun into a giant soufflé of peaks and valleys stretching endlessly into the distance. That humans can survive in such desolation seems unthinkable, yet the "Indigo People," as the Tuareg are known for their beautiful indigo-dyed fabrics, have been living here for centuries as nomadic cattle herders.
Of all the books I've illustrated and designed, A Ride On Mother's Back was the most research-intensive, at least in terms of its breadth of subject matter. I recall having over fifty books out of the library (this was pre-internet), spread out all over my studio floor. None of the details shown here are made up. Tuareg camels are typically white, and they are fed precious grain while being loaded to keep them still. The stand under the camel's chin is a teapot holder, for brewing the concentrated black tea served in fancy shot glasses, popular all over North Africa. The baby munches a piece of flatbread made from millet and wild seed. His head is shaved on both sides, similar to a "mohawk" haircut, but with no designated line down the middle. The girl wears a braided wreath around her head, with two long braids hanging down in front of her ears. These people are stunning in their adornments! Silversmithing fits well into their nomadic lifestyle, and yields unique and striking jewelry. I still have a treasured Tuareg necklace of black and silver beads, with a silver pendant shaped like a winged diamond, purchased on the streets of Conakry in Guinea, West Africa.
This book was designed with every illustration occupying the same horizontal rectangle. To vary the spreads, I used color and composition. The camel provides the architecture of this page, his body forming the foundation of a triangle – a compositional device used in painting since antiquity (here is a famous example). The mother's head is the apex of the triangle, facing right, while the donkey-riders lead the eye toward the left, creating movement and balance within the image. I find these "visual physics" fascinating, and this is why I love book design, which I think of as "the art of context."
My main goal in illustrating this book was to convey the feeling of each place – the cultural vibration inculcated in the babies featured in each scene as they are held and carried in the center of daily life. Babies thrive on passive stimulation and are most content when in motion. Tribal people all over the world understand this, and the book conveys a dozen examples of cultures that are both traditional and contemporary in their baby-carrying lifestyles. We see what the baby sees and absorbs, immersed in ordinary activities. In modern terms this would be known as "attachment parenting" – a newfangled term for what has recently been revived in our society, but has continued in indigenous cultures as an unbroken chain of baby-carrying wisdom that stretches back to our origins. Thanks to Mothering Magazine, attachment parenting became a movement in this country back in the 80s – and its adherents have kept A Ride On Mother's Back in print for 27 years now – longer than any other book I've published. I'm happy to participate in this movement, as it was my own baby-carrying practices that gave birth to the idea for this book. My ex-husband, who authored the book, and I carried our babies everywhere (see photo below, taken in 2004).
I loved delving into all the different people and activities featured in this picture book – from the painted and barefoot Yanomama people of the Amazon rainforest to the mountain-dwelling Hmong tribe of Southeast Asia; from an ice-fishing Inuit mother with her baby nestled in her parka hood, to the flute-playing shepherdess of the Andes with her rosy-cheeked child bouncing in her hand-woven shawl. But perhaps it was the Tuareg people who stood out as the most intriguing and exotic culture. To what degree, I wonder, have the indigenous lifeways of these mysterious people changed since this book was published? As modern technology spreads across the globe, even these nomads of the Sahara are affected by the shifting sands of time.
A Ride On Mother's Back: A Day of Baby-Carrying Around the World is available from my webstore, signed to the recipient of your choice; or may be ordered in bookstores, on Amazon, or through libraries.
A good week to all!
D Yael Bernhard