1625 GAMBIA - A woman with a child

A variety of ethnic groups live in the Gambia, each preserving its own language and traditions, even if it has a population of only 1.8 million (2013). The Mandinka ethnicity is the largest, followed by the Fula, Wolof, Jola, Serahule, Serers, Manjago and the Bianunkas. The Krio people, locally known as Akus, constitute one of the smallest ethnic minorities in country. They are descendants of the Sierra Leone Creole people and have been traditionally concentrated in the capital. The traditional kind of clothing for Gambian women and men tends to be long and free flowing clothes. For women they tend to wear clothes down to their feet as well as up to their wrists. This is called a grandmuba which comes with an under garment called a malan which is a couple of metres of cloth which is wrapped around the waist as an underskirt.

1445 GAMBIA - "Black Ladies" by Uwe Ommer

Born in 1943 in Bergisch Gladbach (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), Uwe Ommer has been taking photos for as long as he can remember. In 1963, he came to live in Paris where he started working as a photographer’s assistant. His work was soon recognized and he began shooting fashion and advertising photos. In December 1995, he took on a personal challenge to make a worldwide family photo album, For four years, he crisscrossed the five continents with his Rolleiflex and his portable studio, creating a unique photographic record of the family at the dawn of the third millennium: 1,251 families photographed and interviewed (1000 Families: das Familienalbum des Planeten Erde / 1000 Families: the Family Album of Planet Earth - Taschen, Cologne, 2000). This postcard, depicting a woman from Gambia, is part of a photo album named Black Ladies (Taco, Berlin, 1987 / Taschen, Cologne, 1995).