Photographing Xhosa Shamans in South Africa

Shaman healers who practice traditional medicine and worship the ancestors are influential figures in South African communities. Traditional healers fulfill different social and political roles in the community, including divination, healing physical, emotional and spiritual illnesses, directing birth or death rituals, finding lost cattle, protecting warriors, counteracting witchcraft, and narrating the history, cosmology, and concepts of their tradition. But what fascinated Italian photographer Tommaso Fiscaletti wasn't their power, but the contrast between that and their everyday lives.

Fiscaletti has been based in Cape Town for the past two and a half years, and first set foot in the small township of Dunoon, in the west of the city, when he was introduced to the urban weavers who live there.
 

The women invited him to come to learn about their designs, but Fiscaletti was struck by the duality of the spiritual and the domestic that shape their lives.
 

He had soon embarked upon a six-month project photographing them, taking shots he's titled Between Home and Wisdom.
 

"On the one hand, they are leading figures for the community and the family and on the other, they're devoted to the cult of the ancestors and spend a lot of time alone," Fiscaletti says.
 

"What attracted me the most was the energy of these women in everyday life, in the context of the township where nature seems to have changed its shape, and life and death seem to have a different feeling to normal reality."
 

Through a combination of staged, cinematic portraits where dramatic lighting illuminates the women in their dark surroundings, and photographs taken against neutral backgrounds, Fiscaletti frames the strong characters of his subjects, focusing on them rather than their social conditions.
 

"My vision, and my approach to the image, has been conditioned by the love for the cinema," he says. See more of Tomasso's work here.

Imaginary Shamans

The shaman in the accompanying image does not exist in real life. He was brought to life by architect and travel photographer Dimitar Karanikolov using artificial intelligence (AI) and Midjourney, a chat-powered text-to-image generator for his portrait series "Imaginary Shamans." All the portraits he created are generated based only on descriptions and words.
 

In a recent interview for Designbloom, a digital magazine for architecture and design, Karanikolov says, "In order to have a more controlled result, I was very specific and described a lot of the details I wished to see in the final image -- the age, the clothes, the ethnicity, to name a few. I have also specified the camera settings -- or the virtual lens I wish to use -- the light scenario, and the framing. The more words I put in, the better."
 

From the creases that line the shamans' faces to the traditional tattoos that ink their skin, the details in every image appear crystal clear, making viewers question whether they were generated by artificial intelligence or snapped by a professional photographer. Karanikolov thinks that artificial intelligence in photography is both fascinating and scary at the same time.
 

"I understand why a lot of people feared this technology," he says. "Still, I think it is an amazing tool that gives lots of people the opportunity to express themselves and visualize their ideas. Surely, it will have a major impact on the photographic industry in the future, and we'll soon have to specify when we post a photo whether it's real or AI, as there will be no difference in the quality."
 

Karanikolov might be an architect, but travel photography has been a passion of his for the last eight years. "I did numerous trips in order to explore and photograph authentic communities around the world such as Mongolia, Ethiopia, Bolivia, and Indonesia. I have always been fascinated by indigenous people and their culture, their rituals and aesthetics. These are our ancestors, our roots," he says.
 

"When AI softwares became wildly popular and open to access several months ago, I naturally tried generating spaces and architectural details, but creating human faces and characters brings much more emotion and connection, along with much more powerful visions. So, I have decided to do some AI travel photography," he tells Designbloom. Bringing his photographic zest with him on every trip has culminated in the creation of "Imaginary Shamans," underlining both the beauty artificial intelligence can generate and the underlying concern it might bring.

Kamloops Indian Residential School

A haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada won the prestigious World Press Photo award on April 7. The image was one of a series of the Kamloops Indian Residential School shot by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times. 
 

It was not the first recognition for Bracken's work in the Amsterdam-based competition. She won first prize in the contest's Contemporary Issues category in 2017 for images of protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.
 

Her latest win came less than a week after Pope Francis made a historic apology to Indigenous peoples for the "deplorable" abuses they suffered in Canada's Catholic-run residential schools and begged for forgiveness.
 

Last May, the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced the discovery of 215 unmarked graves near Kamloops, British Columbia. Established in 1890, it was Canada's largest Indigenous residential school and the discovery of the graves was the first of numerous, similar grim sites across the country.
 

"So we started to have, I suppose, a personification of some of the children that went to these schools that didn't come home," Bracken said in comments released by contest organizers. "There's also these little crosses by the highway. And I knew right away that I wanted to photograph the line of these crosses with these little children's clothes hanging on them to commemorate and to honor those kids and to make them visible in a way that they hadn't been for a long time."

 

Source: World Press Photo

"Things are Looking Native"

Nicholas Galanin is a multi-disciplinary artist and musician of mixed Tlingit/Aleut and non-Native ancestry. His work often explores a dialogue of change and identity between Native and non-Native communities. Born in Sitka, Alaska, Galanin first learned to work with jewelry and light metals, apprenticing with his father. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Design and Silversmithing at London Guildhall University in England, and a Masters of Fine Arts in indigenous visual arts at Massey University in New Zealand. Being trained in both traditional and contemporary approaches in art, he pursues and merges both, exploring the questions of identity, misinterpretation and cultural appropriation.
 

Things are Looking Native, Native's Looking Whiter was the centerpiece of "Unsettled," a 2012 exhibit hosted by the Nevada Museum of Art. It is a digital print that bisects and combines two photographs. On the left is a 1906 Edward S. Curtis image entitled "Tewa Girl," a photograph of an unnamed Hopi-Tewa girl with a traditional "squash blossom" or "butterfly whorl" hairstyle. The right half of the photo-montage depicts Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia from the 1977 film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope with her classic "cinnamon roll" hair style. Galanin's piece is intended as a commentary on cultural appropriation in popular media, which is largely dominated by white actors and directors.
 

Edward S. Curtis's great body of work, while beautifully executed artistically and doubtlessly valuable, has often been criticized. Curtis presented himself as a scientist as well as the artist, documenting the real Indians of North America in their environment. However, by the time Curtis took his first photograph in the 1890s, the noble savage he presented to the public no longer existed. He has also been known to stage his images to look more Native at the time, for example removing or retouching contemporary items in his photos. Each of the images used for Galanin's art piece represent different aspects of cultural appropriation. One--the desire to depict it in an unchanging, romanticized way as a vanishing race; the other--blatantly reusing a piece of cultural heritage while disposing of all Native elements of it.

Martin Gray: Sacred Sites

Martin Gray is a National Geographic photographer and anthropologist specializing in the study of pilgrimage traditions and sacred sites around the world. Over the course of three decades, he studied and photographed nearly 1000 of the world’s most sacred pilgrimage places in more than 125 countries. He has presented his multi-projector slide show at museums, universities and conferences around the world. During the show, Gray presents a fascinating discussion of the mythology, archaeology and history of pilgrimage sites and an explanation of the miraculous phenomena that occur at them. Many people, after viewing this presentation, report a resonance with particular sites and a deepening of their connection to and concern for the Earth.
 
I attended his slide show presentation years ago. It can best be described as a group shamanic event. He opens the event by creating sacred space. He lights a bundle of sage, holds it against the webbing of a single-headed frame drum, and then walks the circumference of the auditorium while drumming. Once the slide show begins, each photograph is shown for precisely 15 seconds, and then an entirely different sacred site is shown. This occurs on and on in a mantric and hypnotic repetition of four pictures per minute for sixty minutes. Certain photos resonated more with me than others. Everyone I talked to after the show was very moved and empowered by the event. His slide show is a true work of shamanic art. It’s a very rare opportunity to see, to witness, to personally experience an event of monumental power.
 
Since ancient times, sacred sites have had a mysterious allure for billions of people around the world. Legends and contemporary reports tell of extraordinary experiences people have had while visiting these places. Different sacred sites have the power to heal the body, enlighten the mind and inspire the heart. A growing body of evidence indicates that there is indeed a concentration of holiness at pilgrimage places, and that this holiness, or field of energy, contributes to a wide variety of beneficial human experiences.
 
During his travels, Gray realized the sacred places were repositories of many of the world’s greatest artistic and cultural treasures. However, because they are located out-of-doors and exposed to industrial pollution, the sacred structures do not receive the protection which paintings, sculptures and other art are given in museums. Looking into this situation, Gray realized that his research and travels had a greater purpose than merely his own education or the creation of a beautiful photography book. Public attention needed to be drawn to the deteriorated condition of these extraordinary art pieces so that they might be preserved for the benefit and education of future generations.
 
To draw attention to this education and preservation work, Gray created a multi-projector slide show that conveys both the remarkable beauty and precarious situation of the sacred sites. Hundreds of full color slides capture the essence of these great pilgrimage shrines. Prior to taking each picture, Gray offered up a prayer to the spirits of the place asking them to, “fill my photographs with such feeling and power that people may one day look upon them and be magically transported to these places.” It is more than evident that those prayers were answered. Gray says, “I personally consider these photographs to be telescopes through which you may peer across time and space into enchanted domains of sublime beauty.”
 
Gray thinks that during the coming decades there will be an enormous number of people visiting sacred sites around the world. Sacred sites function for more and more people as empowerment places, as planetary acupuncture points, as destiny activation sites, and as energy transducers for spiritual illumination. Gray postulates that, in the coming years, sacred sites will become sanctuaries and empowerment zones for the awakening and evolution of ecological, social and supranational political consciousness.
 
Martin Gray’s beautiful photographs convey the essence of the world’s great pilgrimage sites and bear direct testimony to his life’s mission and to his deep connection to Spirit. He has an extensive website at SacredSites.com, which has received more than one hundred million visitors. His photographs are widely used by UNESCO and in hundreds of websites, magazines and books around the world. His books include Geography of Religion by National Geographic, and Sacred Earth by Barnes and Noble. 

Pyramid of the Magician, Uxmal, Mexico (Photograph courtesy SacredSites.com)

Summer Solstice Rituals in Mongolia

On the summer solstice last week, Mongolia's Shamans gathered to practice traditions and rituals that are thousands of years old. In the post-communist era shamanism is undergoing a dramatic revival in Mongolia. Harshly suppressed during Mongolia's long Soviet rule, shamanism is suddenly widely sought to fill the spiritual void of a newly democratic society. From storefronts in Ulan Bator, the nation's capital, to homes in rural Mongolia, shamanism has become a growth industry. The key to its viability seems to be the flexibility inherent in shamanism, where knowledge gained through ritual engagement with spirits in the landscape, rather than a strict cosmological doctrine, is seen as the core of shamanism. Getty images has published a photo essay of the rituals.

"My Seven Months of Living at Standing Rock"

Photo by Desiree Kane

Desiree Kane arrived at Standing Rock in the very last days of May, alongside some comrades, at the request of Wiyaka Eagleman, the first firekeeper at Camp of the Sacred Stones and a founding member of the Keystone XL campaign. He had put out a call to folks in Indian Country for support, and she answered. Over the months, Desiree worked on the security and media teams and always had her camera. Her photos show some of the defining moments of the past seven months--some that made it to mainstream media coverage and others unseen until now. At its peak, Oceti Sakowin Camp has supported as many as 11,000 people, all focused on standing in solidarity with the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota people who lay claim to land through the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. Both the pipeline and the camps are on these lands. Read more.

Portraits of Shamans from Around the World

Baruch Osorno, from Mexico

The Festival du Chamanisme, or Shamanism Festival, is an annual event in Genac, France that brings together shamans from around the world. Photographer Flore-Aël Surun photographed shamans from all over the world at the festival in France earlier this year. Surun, who is from France, said she observed as the shamans showed their respective rituals to one another. "(One shaman) will show how they get entranced and how they make their healing (rituals), so the shaman from the other country can see," she said. "It's like everyone learns about the culture of the other one." There is by no means just one definition or description of what it means to be a shaman, but Surun said the shamans she met were connected in their efforts to keep shamanic traditions alive, as well as in their common messages of peace and hope. Read more.

Wolf in the Northern Lights

Photo by Marja-Terttu Karlsson

Marja-Terttu Karlsson, who resides in Pajala, Swedish Lapland, did not realize how lucky she had been when she went out to photograph the northern lights. Only when she uploaded the images to her computer, did she recognize the familiar shape that appeared right before her eyes. Northern lights are common in the arctic region of the northern hemisphere and are caused by the solar wind colliding with the atmosphere. Northern lights have been getting more common, caused by increased solar activity.

Female Shamanism in Tuva

Photo by Anastasia Ivanova

In the remote Siberian wilderness of Tuva, female shamanism is alive and well -- and visiting the local healer is as commonplace as a day out at the beach. Located in southern Siberia on the border with Mongolia, the Russian republic of Tuva is home to ancient shamanic traditions practiced by women as well as men. Being a shaman in Tuva is open to both men and women. Tuva is regarded as the birthplace of shamanism. It is one of the few places in the world where the shamanic heritage has remained unbroken. Through the millennia, shamans have been very important in Tuva. Rituals play an important role in people's everyday lives, and shamans are integral to life of the community. Tuva is a unique place where no-one questions if spirits actually exist. They exist; the question is how to communicate with them. Russian photographer Anastasia Ivanova has published a photographic essay exploring female shamanism in Tuva.

The Reindeer Riders

Dukha Shaman

Some of the world's greatest secrets and mysteries can be found beyond the boundaries of human civilization. With globalization encroaching more and more on those that try and maintain their unique ways of life, it's incredible to observe those that persevere. This is what makes the Dukha people of the Mongolian outback so fascinating. The nomadic tribe has lived in remote forests in northwestern Mongolia for centuries. During that time, they have developed a distinctive relationship with wild animals that is quite amazing. Through their own brand of animal husbandry, the Dukha people have learned to use reindeer as a means of transportation over the treacherous terrain they call home. They ride them into the deep snowy forests to hunt for food and collect antlers they can sell to nearby villages for basic supplies. Photographer Hamid Sardar-Afkhami recently documented them in a series of stunning photographs.

Mongolian Shamans: Masters of Ecstasy

In the post-communist era shamanism is undergoing a dramatic revival in Mongolia. Harshly suppressed during Mongolia's long Soviet rule, shamanism is suddenly widely sought to fill the spiritual void of a newly democratic society. Mongolian shamanism evokes a rich and barely-tapped store of astrological, environmental, and geographic cultural knowledge. In partnership with National Geographic Magazine, Carolyn Drake has published a photographic essay exploring the shamanic resurgence.

Shamanic Revival in Mongolia

While traditional shamanism continues to decline around the world, it is currently undergoing a revival in Mongolia. In a bewildering urban landscape where long traditions of nomadic lifestyles are things of the past, the ancient beliefs of Tengrism (modern term for a Central Asian religion characterized by features of shamanism, animism, totemism, polytheism and ancestor worship) serve to fill a spiritual void. A new generation of Mongolians has been chosen by the spirits to serve as Shamans. Photographer Hwee Young How has published a photographic essay exploring the shamanic resurgence. 

My Journey

Spirit is calling me. Mother Earth is birthing a new beginning. She is dissolving the existing order and fashioning a new arrangement from the pieces. The earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, tsunamis and climate changes are the birth pangs of this new world. As her birth pangs grow stronger and stronger, I feel compelled to travel to the sacred sites that beckon me. I travel with my drum, medicine bundle and helping spirits. As I travel, I am overwhelmed by the beauty and power of nature. Each holy site is a portal to the womb of the sacred mother where I am reborn again and again. I do not know where my journey will take me or when it will end. I am currently performing ceremonials and workshops near Big Pine, CA. To learn more or to participate, click here. To view my Picasa photo travelogue click here.

Photographing the Essence of Healing

Smoke and Mirrors: A Journey to Healing Knowledge

by Vance Gellert, PhD

"While the term smoke and mirrors is often pejorative when applied to some activity, suggesting something that is deceptive or fake, to me it is magic. Here it refers to the unexplained magic of healing that is part of the healer-patient relationship. As a pharmacologist I believe that in-depth studies of plants used for healing in indigenous cultures will provide the best source of finding new medicines. My strategy has been to not engage in documentary photography, but to interview healers and then observe and participate in their healing rituals. This portfolio is a story of my journey to healing knowledge that starts at the spirit of place and proceeding through the various facets of traditional and indigenous healing to how art and photography can lead to innovative ways of knowing." Read More