Carlo Mari: Passage through Dar - Portraits from Tanzania

In 2018 Carlo Mari, while he was working with his camera on story about fishing, boats, nets and fishermen from all over the coast of East Africa, from North Kenya to Mozambique, decided: “I will make a book on the Dar Es Salaam fish market that I know as my own pockets! A book in the book, a parenthesis of my great story about fishing on the East African coast. Thus was born Passage through DAR ” Carlo Mari Passage through Dar presents those images taken by the Italian photographer in Dar Es Salaam fish market; stunning photographs that show the beauty and genuineness of people who live this place every day, in one of the most spectacular markets in the world.

Carlo Mari is a photographer of reportage and advertising.

He has traveled the world above and below the seas, with his camera around the neck always to tell his story. Between the ’80s and ’90s he published services and covers on the most prestigious Italian and foreign sea magazines. Afterwards and for a long time he documented the wild life of East Africa and was a correspondent of “The Harvill Press” in London. From this collaboration two important volumes were produced: The Great Migration and Pink Africa. In Africa, he now lives several months a year in close contact with unspoiled nature and tribal peoples. Portraitist, for years he has been documenting the beauty – not only the exterior one – of many people at risk of extinction.

Carlo Mari has to his credit many photographic books published all over the world, some concerning the life of seabed, others of East Africa, between Kenya and Tanzania and others more the artistic nude and advertising glamour, as Animal Man , published in Paris by Edition de La Martiniere in 2000. My Africa , one of his most important creations, became part of 2004 best-seller list in Germany. With Leonardo International he realized in 2009 a book on Pope Benedict XVI on his visit to Montecassino Abbey. The connoisseurs know him for his refined FineArt prints in very limited edition, present in many private collections all over the world. In the last three years the call of the sea has been so strong to bring him back in search of ancient sensations. Sea and Africa: these are the ingredients for which he is dedicating himself to tell the story of life, fishing techniques and traditions of fishermen in East Africa.