Honorable Mention / 2019 / Portraiture / Culture

Nomads in South Sudan

  • Photographer
    Timo Heiny, Germany

In February 2018 I travelled to South Sudan. I captured with my Camera the unbelievable culture, full of traditions from an old world, of the Mundari Tribe.The Mundari are one of the most outstanding groups of pastoralists on the African continent.After 40 years of civil war, this dignified group of people whose centuries-old culture is now greatly threatened by the political pressures and changes that affect traditional life in modern times. The culture has survived, but the shadow of the war is still a part of their life.

I was 17 years old when I travelled the first time with my camera through east Africa.
As a visitor who comes from a completely different cultural background, I was fascinated by such an archaic way of life that I had the luck to discover at my journey.First it was the fascination as an photographer to capture these earthy beauty of these tribes.

Today I know, that I had the privilege, temporary to be a part of a life forms that will not survive in our fast changing world.And now my work became a photographic contemporary document.I was inspired by characters as there are Leni Riefenstahl and