Wedding Photojournalism: Some of My Best Friends are Masai

If the bride knows the Masai and they are friends, is she still “using” the Masai as accessories? Umm, yes. Especially when the wedding photos, by a top flight “wedding photojournalist,” ends up splashed across the HuffPost Wedding section — that’s the fifteen photos in the post followed by the 24 photo slide show. (The bride relates how her closest Masai friend presented her with the necklace although I’m not sure that person made it to the party.)

I didn’t see all that much personal engagement between the bride and the locals, by the way, as much as the tribespeople serve as props and the country serves as wallpaper.

Finally, if you’re not familiar with this post from Quartz, it’s a must see. it’s titled: “The reason every book about Africa has the same cover—and it’s not pretty.” Here is just one of the rows of book covers they present to illustrate the knee jerk visual tropes that get rehashed romanticizing Africa:

And here is just one of the pics from Nina and Sebastian’s wedding that, no surprise, picks up the veld, the orange sky and the sun as a big ball, and the animals upon this very happy acacia. Whoops, I meant “occasion.”