Get your copy!

Help us to get 'My Maasai' printed.
Get your copy by pre-order for only €20 including shipping costs.

The Maasai tribe is one of the most photographed tribes across Africa, but pictures of them that cross the world are almost always from Western photographers who show a cliché like vision of the traditional jumping Maasai.

'My Maasai' is a photo publication in which photographers from Eastern Africa show their vision on the Maasai.
It shows pictures of a rapper Maasai, a pilot Maasai, a lesbian Maasai, Maasai architecture, a female Maasai God and much more.

This books fights the stereotype image of the jumping Maasai and shows at the same time why African photographers are so much better in photographing the topics in their own region.

We are very happy to have 100% but we still need your help! If we have a 1000 euro's more it will become much more easy to set up a distribution system in Eastern Africa as well, what is really important because that makes that the Maasai community has acces to the book as well.

‘My Maasai’ is an initiative of Jan Hoek, in collaboration with Kenyan based photographers; Sarah Waiswa (Uganda), Joel Lukhovi (Kenya), Mohammed Althoum (Sudan) as well as students of the De-Capture Limited School of Photography.

All the work is done, all the picture are made, the design is ready, we just need some help to get this book printed!
So please buy your copy, with only 150 copies pre-orderd this book can exist and will be published all over the world: from Nairobi to New York.

My Maasai (text by Karanja Nzisa)
The Maasai are the most photographed people from the East African region, and per-haps even, greater Africa. However, most of the images of the Maasai which the world has come to know and love are composed and captured by far removed Western photographers whose narrow representations of this diverse tribal group are almost always manifested in jumping warriors and bare chested women struggling to look pasta swarm of flies into the camera lens while balancing snotty faced tots on their hips.

Time has come for the people of the wonderful Kenya and surroundings to reconstruct this narrative and show through their own images, how they see the modern Maasai. Yes, the Maasai still jump with the astonishing capability they are widely celebrated for and yes they still adorn themselves with swathes of beautiful traditional fabrics and ornate beadwork,but like any other society, the Maasai have evolved into a more complex multi-dimensional community to keep up abreast of the times.

The Maasai people being among the last in the region who still display a strong, visual cultural identity find themselves at that inevitable intersection where modernity with all its trappings faces off with the ethnocultural. It is a crucial moment in the history of their kind.One that must be recorded truthfully and fairly for the world today and for posterity

‘My Maasai’ is a brave and socially significant project bringing together photographers from different backgrounds across Eastern Africa to convey their personal mental impressions of the Maasai people today.

‘My Maasai’ is an initiative of Jan Hoek, in collaboration with Kenyan based photographers; Sarah Waiswa (Uganda), Joel Lukhovi (Kenya), Mohammed Althoum (Sudan) as well as students of the De-Capture Limited School of Photography.

This project is supported by Mondriaand Fund and MiaP (Message In A Photo)