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Karo Woman, Omo Valley, Ethiopia, 2000

A woman from the Karo tribe, with customary short braided hair, looks through the doorway of a mud building in Ethiopia's Omo Valley. With under a thousand members, the Karo are the smallest of the valley's four main tribes.

Karo men and women are known for their ritual scarification. Men scar their chests to represent rivals killed from enemy tribes; women with scarred chests are considered sensual and attractive.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Enigma of Beauty," January 2000, National Geographic magazine)

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Photograph by Jodi Cobb