‘Black Panther’ inspired by African art, says designer

Ruth Elaine Carter, ‘Black Panther’s’ costume designer has said African art inspired her work for the film. She pointed to a number of visual sources, which includes a photo of the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania as they sing in Kimani on December 13, 2014. Another photograph shows a Suri woman of South Sudan […]

Ruth Elaine Carter, ‘Black Panther’s’ costume designer has said African art inspired her work for the film. She pointed to a number of visual sources, which includes a photo of the Maasai people of Kenya and Tanzania as they sing in Kimani on December 13, 2014.

Another photograph shows a Suri woman of South Sudan wearing a lip plate and paints her face in Ethiopia’s southern Omo Valley region near Kibbish on September 25, 2016. Then there’s one where Himba women pose on August 19, 2010 on the road between Ohungumure and Opuwo in northern Namibia.

A picture taken on February 9, 2005 shows two Dogon residents wearing traditional outfits and masks performing a dogon dance in a village near the sandstone cliffs of Bandiagara in the centre of Mali.

In yet another, Touareg people celebrate in Niafounke as Malian and French soldiers entered the historic city of Timbuktu, occupied for 10 months by Islamists who imposed a harsh form of sharia, on January 28, 2013. 

The visual sources, which are diverse as they are intriguing also show the Basotho people queue to vote, at a polling station on June 3, 2017 in Maseru, during Lesotho’s general election. The Ndebele people of South Africa is also not left out in a photograph of artist Esther Mahlangu, 81, as she poses at her home in Mabhoko Village, Siyabuswa, Mpumalanga on March 6, 2017.

Last week, Marvel Studios released the first poster for Black Panther, and announced the first teaser trailer for the film.  

Set in the fictional, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda, Carter’s work on Black Panther was influenced by people, clothing and art from the African continent.