A Lens to Candomblé Afro-Brazilian culture through the work of Pierre Verger

https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/33946/A%20Lens%20to%20Candombl%C3%A9.pdf?sequence=1

Introduction

 This Research Master Arts and Culture thesis deals with Afro-Brazilian culture, focusing on the work of Pierre Verger, a French photographer and ethnologist who executed extensive work on this topic. My field of research is photography and cultural exchange, or interculturality, specifically between Africa and Brazil in regards to Candomblé ritual. Candomblé is a cultural-religious practice that is the result of cross-cultural exchange. In Flash of The Spirit (1984), Robert Farris Thompson, who has devoted serious study to the art history of the Afro-Atlantic world, emphasized that African civilizations in transition to the West represent an important migration style to the world’s history.1 This author belongs to the state of the art in this field, representing much of what has been written about the art history of Afro-Brazilian topics in the English language. Another recent work worth mentioning written in English is Ecstatic Encounters (2011) by Mattijs van de Port from the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences of the University of Amsterdam.2 This author has concentrated on Bahian3 Candomblé, which is my specific object of study. Even though a lot of research has been done on Bahian Candomblé, very little is available in English. In this thesis I wish to contribute opening up material for an English speaking audience; also, I aim to show how Pierre Verger, through the lens of his camera and his theoretical framing, is fundamental for the academic research of Candomblé. I am going to introduce Pierre Verger, and explain what Candomblé is composed of in an attempt to contribute a relevant study to the field, considering the context of Leiden University and the Netherlands at large, where little is known in regards to Afro-Brazilian culture despite the significant sources available. My approach will be based on how Candomblé has been framed by scholars such as Pierre Verger, who went after the African historical and cultural roots that compose Brazilian Candomblé. The corpus of this research is Pierre Verger’s 1957 work, Notes sur Le Culte des Orisha et Vodum, la Baie de Tous les Saints, au Brésil et à l’ancienne Côte des Esclaves en Afrique, which is a rare title available at Leiden University Library. This book concerns, as the title suggest, an extensive compilation of notes and photographs regarding the cults of orishas and vodun, which in Brazil are venerated (not exclusively) in Candomblé. Therefore, my research question is concerned in analyzing how Candomblé was conveyed by Pierre Verger’s lenses, both in visual and discursive ways