In 1971, 40 years ago, Mirella Ricciardi was to publish one of the seminal books documenting Africa’s tribes and their customs and cultures – customs and cultures that she feared were all too rapidly disappearing. The book was ‘Vanishing Africa’, and it was to remain in print for 20 years.

Mirella Ricciardi was born in Kenya during colonial times to a French mother and Italian father. She spent her fond childhood years living on her family ranch near Lake Naivasha, the Rift Valley, Kenya. She speaks of those early formative years spent in East Africa as forever marking her.

Years later, in 1967, she would return to the continent to document daily life in the Horn of Africa capturing remarkable imagery of the Maasai, Turkana, Rendille, Samburu, Bajun and the Gala Boran peoples. Her curiosity and passions driving her, she criss-crossing the region over a period of two years, travelling more than 20,000 miles compelled to document a traditional way of life that she observed to be disappearing. This body of work would propel her career forward and would also later go on to influence the likes of prominent photographers Leni Riefenstahl and Peter Beard who would soon after also publish coffee table books on East African peoples.