Alfred Weidinger | The Last African Kings

Photo © Alfred Weidinger | All Rights Reserved

"The most important thing is to find one king -- when I have one, he will guide me to the others." - Alfred Weidinger

With a couple of exceptions, African kings are traditional rulers who often derive their titles from the rulers of independent states or communities that existed before the formation of modern African states. Although they do not have formal political power, in many cases they continue to command respect from their people and have considerable influence.  There are only three African countries with constitutional monarchies – Morocco, Swaziland and Lesotho -- but there are several hundred traditional monarchs dispersed across Africa in urban, semi-urban and rural communities in independent countries.

It is estimated that there are about 70 such African monarchs as well as some 500 tribal leaders, whose dynasties and fiefdoms marked the history of Africa until the middle of the twentieth century. 

Austria-based art historian and photographer Alfred Weidinger spent over 5 years searching for the surviving monarchs of Africa's grandest kingdoms and for tribal leaders and important clan chiefs. Traveling from Nigeria to Ghana, Zambia to Cameroon, and from the Ivory Coast to the Democratic Republic of Congo, he photographed these rulers and leaders who are still committed to their old traditions, and are revered and respected by their people.

The biggest threat to Africa's last remaining monarchs isn't local governments, but modernity. The threat of globalization has disturbed the influence and social standing of many of his subjects.

The Last African Kings is a voluminous gallery of -mostly- monochromatic portraits of these rulers which were made over repeated trips to Ghana, Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Mali, Sierra Leone, Niger, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.

Alfred Weidinger is an Austrian art historian, museum manager and photographer. He currently is the director of the Museum of Fine Arts Leipzig. Since 1980, he has been touring Africa as a freelance documentary photographer and recording portraits. He photographs both digitally and with film, preferring black and white. From 1985 to 1998 Weidinger studied art history and classical archeology at the University of Salzburg. He wrote his diploma thesis in 1992 on the landscape paintings of Gustav Klimt, his dissertation in 1998 on the early work of the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka.

Jean-Claude Moschetti | Egunguns | Magic on Earth

Photo © Jean-Claude Moschetti - All Rights Reserved

African spirituality, such as worship of ancestors and protective spirits, also includes traditional secret societies and voodoo, and is a fertile field for unusual ethnographic photography.

Jean-Claude Moschetti's photographs in Magic On Earth is about these African occult traditions where masks are considered to be mediators between the living world and the supernatural world of the dead, ancestors and other entities.

He tells us that in Burkina Faso, these masks represent protective spirits that can take animal forms or can appear as strange beings. These spirits watch over a family, clan or community, and if the rules for their propitiation are followed correctly, provide for the fertility, health, and prosperity.

The word Egungun signifies all types of masquerades or masked, costumed figures worn by the Yoruba people, and which are connected with ancestor reverence, or to the ancestors themselves as a collective force. The Yoruba is an ethnic group of Southwestern and North central Nigeria as well as Southern and Central Benin known as the Yorubaland cultural region of West Africa.

Amongst the Yoruba, the annual ceremonies in honor of the dead serve as a means of assuring their ancestors a place among the living. They believe the ancestors have the responsibility to compel the living to uphold the ethical standards of the past generations of their clan, town or family. The Egungun are celebrated in festivals, known as Odun Egungun, and in family ritual through the masquerade custom.

Jean-Claude Moschetti has photographed his Egungun series in four different countries; Benin, Burkina-Faso, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. He plans to continue this series throughout the African continent.
 

Born in France, he studied at the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion, en Belgique, and worked in the movie industry. He worked as a freelance photographer/photojournalist since 1995.

His work appeared in Le Figaro, Libération, Le Monde, GEO, Les Echos, Le Point, L’Express, La Vie, Capital, Challenges, L’Expansion, L’Usine Nouvelle, Moniteur duBTP, Liaisons Sociales, LSA, Que Choisir, Forbes Magazine, Financial Times, among others.

Jason Florio | The Vodun Trail

Photo © Jason Florio-All Rights Reserved

I had a hard time choosing a photo essay out of Jason Florio's interesting and compelling work, but thought that his Benin: The Vodun Trail would suit this blog the best due to my own interest in featuring and documenting religious rituals.

The other photo essays that competed for my attention are The Ring (a photo essay on Muay Thai boxing in Chiang Mai) and Blackout Portraits-Mogadishu.

Benin is considered the cradle of vodun (one of its adaptations is voodoo) which is one of the ancient belief system essentially based on animism. Despite concerted efforts of Christian missionaries, this ancient belief system still has millions of adherents along West Africa’s former Slave Coast, from Ghana to parts of Nigeria, and especially in Benin. In 1996, Benin’s democratic government officially decreed vodun a religion, and ever since, thousands have openly practiced it. A significant percentage of Benin practice pure vodun. For more information, an article from the New York Times (with Jason's photographs) can be viewed here.

Jason Florio is a New York City based photographer and writer from London. He worked as a freelance photojournalist around the globe for publications including The New Yorker, New York Times, Outside, Liberation and The Times of London, working on stories that attempt to reveal the unseen and to provide an alternative point of view on people and places.

He spent the last 3 months of 2009 making a 930 km expedition by foot of The Gambia, West Africa to produce a series of portraits of African chiefs for which in part he was given fellowship of the Royal Geographical Society in London. His work on Afghanistan is in the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, as well as a number of private collections.

The Frame | Voodoo Festival

Photo © AP / Jon Gambrell-Courtesy SacBee's The Frame

The Frame, the Sacramento Bee's photo blog, features photographs of the exciting Benin's Voodoo Festival. This is certainly one festival I would have loved to attend, but it completely fell off my radar. Perhaps next year? It appears it's held every January 10th. There are also a number of travel companies that can arrange for tourists (oh, no!!) to attend the festival.

But who knows? Perhaps a future destination for one of The Travel Photographer's Photo Expeditions-Workshops?

Ouidah, on the Atlantic coast of Benin, is where voodoo began, and the launching point for its voyage to the Americas with the boatloads of African slaves. It is also the mecca for the spirits and gods worshipped by practitioners of Voodoo, or Vodun, a recognised religion in this former French colony in West Africa that is home to 9 million people.

According to the accompanying write up on The Frame, local banks and the post office closed as Ouidah celebrated this annual festival,; which is increasingly drawing curious foreigners. With its mix of beliefs and traditions, the Voodoo practiced here shows both a clash of cultures and the ability for ancient traditional beliefs to adapt to modern life.

Voodoo, or Orisha, as it is practiced today, originated many hundred years ago among the Yoruba people who live in the region of modern-day Togo, Benin and parts of Nigeria. Followers of voodoo believe in an unapproachable god and an array of spirits who serve as intermediaries. Slaves, forced to leave Benin's sandy shores in their millions, took such beliefs to the U.S. and the islands of the West Indies, where they spread and formed the basis of religions like Candomblé, Macumba, Santería and Umbanda.

Frederic Vanwalleghem | Vodun

"Vodun practitioners worship a pantheon of gods and lesser deities that inhabit objects ranging from stones to waterfalls."

Here's a short video made of moving images and stills by photographer Frederic Vanwalleghem made in Ouidah (Benin)of the ancient belief system of vodun.

Despite concerted efforts of Christian missionaries, this ancient belief system still has millions of adherents along West Africa’s former Slave Coast, from Ghana to parts of Nigeria, and especially in Benin. In 1996, Benin’s democratic government officially decreed vodun a religion, and ever since, thousands have openly practiced it. It's estimated that  20 percent of the population of Benin, or about a million people, practice pure vodun.

The belief system is called vodun in Benin, vodou or voodoo in Haiti and vudu in the Dominican Republic.

Frederic Vanwalleghem is a Belgian photographer; deeply interested in African religious traditions, and especially in vodun, a topic he has researched for years. He became interested in vodun when he first traveled to Cuba and discovered santeria, the Afro-Cuban religious tradition, and was subsequently introduced its secret ceremonies in Trinidad. Later, he traveled to Nigeria and Benin, to look for the roots of diasporic traditions like santeria, condomble and vodun.

An interesting article on vodun was recently featured in The New York Times, and a full interview with Frederic Vanwalleghem was featured in The Leica Camera Blog.

Jean Michel Clajot : African Scarification

Image Copyright © Jean Michel Clajot-All Rights Reserved
Here's a nicely produced photo essay (using the now-ubiquitous Soudslides program) by the well traveled photographer Jean Michel Clajot. He's a photojournalist based in Brussels, and is represented by the COSMOS Photo Agency in Paris and by Aurora Photos in Portland.

This particular slideshow will be exhibited at the Campo Santo on Monday September 3 during the famous Visa Pour l’Image in Perpignan (September 1-16). I particularly liked the music chosen to accompany the photographs by the talented Ismael Lo.The images were photographed in Benin, and some are quite graphic. A well photographed project and I think deserving of being exhibited.

Jean Michel Clajot's Scarification.

David Paul Carr: Benin

Image Copyright © David Paul Carr- All Rights Reserved
I start the week with David Paul Carr, an English photographer based in Paris, France. His work includes editorial, corporate, institutional and NGO photography projects. His website has galleries showcasing his work in Benin, Istanbul, Kashmir and Banda Aceh among others.

His photographs are extremely powerful and I am delighted by his work from Benin...remarkable sensitivity and, in my view, captivating environmental portraiture. I am working on a long-term project that involves similar portraiture, and I'm glad to have found David's portfolio of Benin, as it's an inspiration.

Unfortunately, there is no text nor are there captions to accompany his Benin photographs, but I did some research. Benin is a small West African country, formerly known as Dahomey. Its largest neighbor is Nigeria to its east. As Dahomey, the country was part of the French West Africa until independence in 1960.

David's portraits are of the Yoruba people. They are a large ethno-linguistic group in Benin, and whose diasporic communities exist in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Trinidad, the Caribbean, and the United States. Moreover, it is believed that "Voodoo" originated in Benin and was introduced to these countries by slaves taken from this particular area. The indigenous religion of Benin is practiced by about 60% of the population. This is why you'll see images in the Benin gallery of religious artifacts and of women wearing masks.

I chose this lovely photograph of a Yoruba girl in front of a school's chalkboard for this post. The hand -presumably that of the teacher- writes the words "that the lazy fail surprises no one" in French. There are many other wonderful images on David's website, such as the one of the young Yoruba girl holding a white doll (also a favorite), but to me...it's the girl at school that I prefer. Maybe it's her eyes, maybe it's her expression...I don't know.

David's Benin - Ketou Flash gallery.

David's Benin-Ketou Slideshow.