Black Gods in Exile / Publications / Pierre Verger
URL: http://schwarze-goetter-im-exil.de/eng/pub/verger.html
Manfred Metzner / Michael M. Thoss (Ed.)
Pierre Verger
Black Gods in Exile
Book/Catalog
Format 27,5 x 31,5 cm; 490 b/w photographs (duplex)
Language: German
352 pages, bound edition with dust jacket
With dedications by Dr. Christina Weiss and Gilberto Gil
With texts by Roger Bastide, Mario Cravo Neto, Emmanuel Garrigues, Gilberto
Gil, Édouard Glissant, Erica Jane de Hohenstein, Angela Lühning,
Manfred Metzner, Michael Thoss, Pierre Verger a.o.
Translated from Brazilian Portuguese by Margrit Klingler-Clavijo
Translated from French by Beate Thill
Euro 49,90 / Sfr 85,50
ISBN 3-88423-223-1
Publishing house Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2004.
Website with order system: www.wunderhorn.de
According to UNESCO studies, 12 million slaves were abducted by Europeans to the so-called New World. The collected memory of this atrocity - the greatest theft of human life in world history - was kept alive on the other side of the Atlantic in ritual practices of the Brazilian Candomblé, Haitian voodoo, and Cuban Santería despite the forced catholicizing of the slaves. This transatlantic trafficking in human beings nevertheless spurred a migratory movement, whose effects have meanwhile reached the Western capitals of Europe.
No other twentieth-century photographer explored or documented the mutual cultural relationships and continual transfer of knowledge between Europe, Africa and both Americas as thoroughly as Pierre Verger (1902-1996). While the work of this ethnologist-reporter-photojournalist is only known to insiders, his importance as one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century was known early on in his Brazilian homeland by choice. Verger played a major role as a forerunner of visual anthropology and ethnography; he influenced an entire generation of artists and literary-and-academic personalities on both sides of the Atlantic. His photographic work for the magazines Daily Mirror, Life, Paris Match, Paris Soir, and O Cruzeiro, but also his academic studies, essentially contributed to the self-understanding of multiethnic societies in the transatlantic triangle.
In the cultural and religious syncretism of Afro-Brazilian populations, Verger's analytic gaze recognized the strategies for mastering conflicts, for finding one's identity, and the assimilation of modernity in both Americas. With his straightforward photographic style, he immortalized the significance of the daily rituals for modern Creole societies.
Pierre Verger has left behind 63,000 photographs. These are the unique documents of both a time period and the history of media. But his images of Afro-Brazilian religious cults in particular, created in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Martinique, USA, as well as in North and West Africa, are proof of his supreme artistry, of his gift to recognize the magic in a single moment.
Many of the photographs in the exhibition and catalog are published now for the first time. The book publication is accompanied by comprehensive texts on Pierre Verger's life and work.
Pierre Verger was born 1902 in Paris. Beginning 1932, he photographed 6x6 images with a Rolleiflex for the Musée d'Ethnographique in Paris. In the 1930s and 1940s he traveled throughout Asia, Africa and America as a photojournalist. In 1946 he settled in Salvador da Bahia (Brazil). From there he devoted himself to researching Afro-Brazilian deities and religious cults. His major work was published in 1954 under the title of Dieux d'Afrique. Up until the year 1996 he frequently traveled the South American and African continents and published many books of photography. On the anniversary of his 100th birthday, a retrospective of his work was shown in numerous Brazilian cities. The Pierre Verger Foundation in Salvador da Bahia manages his estate; in 2003 it inaugurated the Pierre Verger Gallery in Salvador.
The Editors
Manfred Metzner works as an editor and lawyer in Heidelberg. He is the editor for monographs on the oeuvre of Philippe Soupault and the photographic works of Ré Soupault.
Michael M. Thoss studied in Germany and France. He was a journalist and translator before working at the Goethe-Institut in Jakarta, Paris and Munich. From 1998 to 2003 he headed the Department for Visual Arts, Film and Media at the House of World Cultures in Berlin. Since then he heads the forum of the Goethe-Institut, and curated the exhibition Black Gods in Exile for six German museums.
© Organizers Black Gods in Exile