Visual “Voodoo”: Photo-Voice in Togo

Visual Anthropology ISSN: 0894-9468 (Print) 1545-5920 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gvan20 Visual “Voodoo”: Photo-Voice in Togo Eric J. Montgomery To cite this article: Eric J. Montgomery (2017) Visual “Voodoo”: Photo-Voice in Togo, Visual Anthropology, 30:4, 287-309, DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2017.1296321 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2017.1296321 Published online: 07 Jul 2017. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gvan20 Download by: [University of Connecticut] Date: 08 July 2017, At: 04:06 Visual Anthropology, 30: 287–309, 2017 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0894-9468 print/1545-5920 online DOI: 10.1080/08949468.2017.1296321 Visual “Voodoo”: Photo-Voice in Togo Eric J. Montgomery This article is a photo-essay from a salah Gorovodu ceremony among Anlo-Ewes living in Southern Togo. It is a shared ethnographic project employing the photovoice of three subjects and the anthropologist. The experiment was determined, produced and edited by three members of a local shrine and compiled during focus groups and feedback screenings in the summers of 2013–2014. Photo-voice and related shared approaches help to cast more light on a historically misinterpreted religion, “Voodoo,” by employing local agency and empowering the subjects to participate in analysis centered on ritual, healing and identity. The Vodu or “Voodoo” religion and peoples have been much maligned by misrepresentations which more collaborative, shared and internal approaches can help rectify. For a filmmaker and cultural anthropologist doing research for the past 16 years in southern Togo, just how to “represent” and frame Vodu ritual and performance has long been a critical question. After making two films in 2012 (Chasing the Spirit and African Herbsmen), my colleague and I realized we had constructed our own “crisis in representation” because, during film feedback screenings and focus groups, it was apparent that there were multiple interpretations and meanings arising from the same social drama. When we returned in 2013 to film, we wanted to use some new techniques to empower the actors themselves, in this case, the Gorovodu and Vodu adherents among the Ewes of southern Togo. We were well-versed in the sensory anthropology literature and were looking for a more holistic method to accompany the diversity and depth of Vodu ritual and ceremony [Geurts 2003; Howes and Classen 2013, 2014; Stoller 1992]. We knew too well there would be no veritable panacea for our representational crisis, but when we stumbled upon photo-voice methodology we felt it would be worth implementing in the field. We collaborated with many of our main contacts from the village, and after some debate the subjects decided we would choose a salah ceremony as our “thick photo description” and “master drama” for our experiment. Armed with cameras and some loose directions, I and three others ERIC J. MONTGOMERY is a Professor in the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State University and in the Department of Anthropology at Central Michigan University. He was the producer and co-director of two ethnographic films [2012a, b] and has written extensively on the Ewe peoples of Western Africa; as well as being the co-author of a book, Ethnography of a Vodu Shrine in Southern Togo [Brill, 2017]. E-mail: eric.montgomery@wayne.edu Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www. tandfonline.com/gvan. 287 288 E. J. Montgomery photographed and documented what we felt were the most “symbolic” and “important” during rituals and performance on a Friday afternoon in June 2013. Gorovodu and Vodu are by their very nature multi-vocal and pro-sensory. “Voodoo” metaphysics also escapes Western mind-body dichotomies because personhood is cumulative and includes multiple spirits, ancestors, slaves, animals, plants and more [Montgomery and Vannier 2015; Vannier and Montgomery 2016]. Geurts argues that the “five-sense” model for framing the sensorial is inadequate among Anlo-Ewes, where seselelame (intuition) and balance are as essential as seeing and hearing, and where “identity was felt rather than simply thought” [Geurts 2003: 386; also Pink 2006]. The “Voodoo” worldview is founded on embodiment and mimesis; personhood intersects with the local, regional and global spirits with past cultural contact with Ewe peoples during north-south trade for slaves, salt, kola nut and more [Akyeampong 2001; Montgomery and Vannier 2015; Rosenthal 2005]. Ewe “bodily ways of knowing” and Vodu culture are connected to their music and performance [Friedson 2009; Geurts 2003], spirit possession and law [Rosenthal 1998, 2005], slavery [Wendl 1999], history and resistance [Allman and Parker 2005; Venkatachalam 2011], and plant medicine and healing [Mann 2010; Montgomery and Vannier 2012a, b, 2015]. Gorovodu is an eclectic and highly embedded system and way of life that is difficult to capture and pin down. The ethnographic obsession with text and text-based analysis often does more to mystify than clarify the acted out and multi-sensory culture of Ewe Vodu. The approach here is to empower the participants themselves in telling a more complete and inclusive storyline by way of photo-voice and visual anthropology. The photo-essay and interpretations which follow stem from a concerted effort to share in the telling of a microcosm of Ewe culture, a salah or Islamic portion of Gorovodu ceremony, in which the people themselves selected, filmed and later led focus groups on. In 2013 I held a weekly brainstorm and training session where a group of six subjects from throughout the Vodu pantheon determined the course of a month’s research in the village of Gbedala, on the Togolese coast. This essay will assess some of these shared approaches, namely photo-voice, life-histories and focus groups. Photo-voice and thick descriptions of Ewe rituals will provide the primary scope as four sets of visual figures from a ritual-ceremonial procedure give the overall structure. Shared and visual anthropologies may offer a more vivid and acute account of Ewes and related cultures founded mainly on experienced and symbolic practices, which for too long have been ensconced in mystification, the process of explaining away what might otherwise be evident [Berger 1972: 33]. Regarding presenting “Voodoo” from West Africa to the Americas: mystification, misinformation, misinterpretation and misrepresentation have been the norm. So much so that an entire religion has been relegated to the confines of “primitive superstition” as zombies and vampires become all the rage [Boluk and Lenz 2011; Félix 2009]. The advent of video has done little to alleviate this problem, and popular films and photos pertaining to “Voodoo” the world over continue to be endowed with fallacy, despite many informative texts by anthropologists [Blier 1996; McCarthy Brown 1991; Rosenthal 1998]. Here, one key symbol, a salah Vodu ceremony, is explored from four different perspectives, as three subjects and I use photo-voice to get at the deeper Photo-Voice in Togo 289 meanings of the Vodu cosmos. Photo-voice does not overcome the “crisis in representation” within anthropology and many have problematized it for overly celebrating its participatory qualities, including the fact that it is tied to “social justice action” when it is really perpetuating “social justice awareness”; so this is something I do not want to reproduce here [Sanon et al. 2014: 225]. This article will include some of the more nuanced promises and problems associated with photo-voice as a method too. This ceremony illustrates the connection between northern gods marked by Islam, slavery and wildness, and their pervasive presence and effects on southern Ewe “Voodoo” agency and structure [Friedson 2009]. Three villagers (Kwasi, Nenevi, and Koko) actually provide photos, video footage and descriptive analysis, including captions and titles of selected photos and screenshots. Photovoice and related mutual approaches may help cast more light on a historically misinterpreted religion, Vodu/“Voodoo.” PHOTO ESSAY AND ETHNOGRAPHIC VIGNETTE: THE SALAH CEREMONY The salah ceremony began slowly on a sizzling Sunday in mid-June. Salah means “prayer” in Arabic, and because the Gorovodu gods are northern in origin (Hausa) and associated with Islam, this ceremony was a tribute to these northern encounters and origins of the gods. An Ewe priestess named Madame Tosavi had a dream in the 1950s in which she was visited by the female trickster-god of stone Sunia Compo, along with two Muslim mullahs. From this dream the Muslim connection to Gorovodu was forged in a nod toward romance and respect for these northern spirits [Friedson 2009; Rosenthal 1998]. When the gods from the north mount adepts in trance they sometimes will speak northern/slave languages and tongues: Mossi, Hausa, and Kabye. These northern gods possess southern adepts, and help to heal the sick and bring good fortune to the unfortunate. Salah ceremonies are now to be seen in nearly all Akpedada (thanksgiving), Wizododo (welcoming of the gods), and Fetatrotro (turning-of-the-year) ceremonies. Salah is detailed in our film Chasing the Spirit: Gorovodu in Southern Togo [2012], and Friedson devotes an entire chapter of his ethnography to salah [2009: chap. 2]. Normally salah are held on Fridays (to accord with the Islamic holy day) and after the call to prayer, alms and other Islamic elements have concluded it quickly becomes a “Voodoo” affair, complete with northern possession of southern bodies [Rosenthal ibid.; Friedson ibid.]. The Ewes traded with northern peoples for generations, so many northern slaves came south to the coast. Since many of these “slaves” married into Ewe patrilineal descent groups, they form a part of Ewe personhood in real ways. These northern gods were known to heal the sick, eradicate witchcraft, and bring about African ideals of equality and kinship [Allman and Parker 2005; Venkatachalam 2011, 2015]. They are also anti-colonial, and gained steam after the turn of the 20th century in northern Ghana, when cocoa plantations created social conflict and witchcraft accusations were pervasive. This ceremony would be held at the young female priest’s and chief’s compound, and not the major shrine of Bisi’s, the main priest of the village. This 290 E. J. Montgomery priest, named Madza, was a younger woman, building a reputation as a skilled diviner and healer, and thus representing a shift from the male-dominated shrine of Bisi to a female-centered shrine from another part of the village of Gbedala. We were there early on June 6, with Koko, Kwasi and Nenevi helping white-balance the cameras and fine-tune the microphones and video cameras. The adodo drum sparked up and a dozen or so women dressed in the traditional white cloth were present, milling about as the scene unfolded. Many children had been falling sick; at that point a Bangle (warrior god) and Wango (water and crocodile) adept fell into trance, delivering warnings about jealousy (n’bia) and witchcraft (aze) arising from within the village and as a result of transgressions, mainly breaking Vodu law (ese). One should not lie, steal, cheat, assault, insult, abuse drugs and alcohol, or wish evil upon others. When this happens folks fall sick, and children are the most vulnerable: seven children had died in the past month alone from witchcraft and sorcery (juju or bovodu) and there was a fear that more would be on the brink. As the adepts were possessed they demanded a ritual cleansing of all the infants, digging holes in the sand to serve as basins, mixing several plants and other ingredients, and incessantly washing the youngsters. I had been suffering from a fever and diarrhea and so also took part in the ritual bathing. In the end, the warrior and crocodile gods, Bangle and Wango, possessed two spirit-wives and told them what plants to mix and what to do to protect the children from witchcraft and the sickness that comes with it. The plants contain many medicinal properties and the collective rites of passage symbolize a physical and spiritual cleansing. What unfolds here is a photo-essay from Kwasi, Koko and Nenevi. The hope is that these visuals can provide another way of seeing the scene that might not be possible through text-based methods. It is also an effort at shared ethnography because of the participatory nature of information-gathering and translation. Photo-Voice 1—Salah Ceremony, by Kwasi, Aged 39 (Drummer, Fisherman) In the first vignette [Figure 1] Kwasi, a male drummer and son of the highestranking priest, chose three images all orbiting the warrior god Bangle, whose black and white colors have been associated with comprehensive myths among Dagarti peoples, where a black and white version and mythology has existed for generations [Goody 1972]. The Ewe found these northern and foreign gods very helpful with cases of sickness, infertility, witchcraft and other matters, and slowly assembled many of them into what today is the Gorovodu pantheon stretching along the coast from Ghana to Nigeria. All of Kwasi’s photos were derived from footage he shot that day and night on a video camera. He was more than a friend and research associate, he was also our security guard and special informant, who demanded to be a part of all research activity: setting up lighting, translating songs, devising questions and recruiting subjects. Kwasi has been my primary contact since the 1990s, and he worked deliberately behind the camera, even searching far for important contacts regarding questions of ritual, divination, political economy and more. For Kwasi, he saw Bangle as the modus operandi of Ewe belief and also as the vital symbol for this montage. He Photo-Voice in Togo 291 Figure 1 “Bangle at Work: Bangle ketetsi kokomesatsi” (Bangle the vulture eats everything, but nothing eats him). (Photo credit: Kwasi; used with permission) commented that Togo has always been at war, from colonialism through Independence and after, with one family maintaining a dictatorship for fifty years (and counting). Kwasi is also a “child of Bangle” (banglevi) and even has a tattoo of his symbolic trident (apie) on his lower back. In Figure 1 Kwasi shows himself witnessing a goat sacrifice for Bangle in the Sacred Forest. The Sacred Forest represents Ewe ancestors and their relationship with northern peoples who married into Ewe lineages and now form the cornerstone of Gorovodu religion. Kwasi labels Figure 1 “Bangle at work,” with the caption “I eat everything, and nothing eats me.” For Kwasi, Bangle is the foremost Gorovodu spirit and, as he said during a focus group, “the only Vodu who can rest in the shrine and be brought to the Sacred Forest.” The Ewes perceive the north as not only the birthplace of their gods but also as a wilder, dangerous yet potent way of life. With these northerners performing work and marrying into Ewe lineages, there is a belief that “debt stays” and that memorializations by way of ritual and trance are necessary for a stable present [Vannier and Montgomery 2016]. Bangle shape-shifts and turns into a vulture, with his very personhood tied to hunting, scavenging, and “eating everything.” He is a hot-spirit (vumeku), meaning he died in blood violently; and ever since his brother had been killed on his motorcycle in 2003, Kwasi’s affinity for Bangle only grew. In fact, all folks who meet an untimely and violent death (vumeku: lit. “died in blood”) rest with Bangle in the Sacred Grove; and since violence is contagious and begets violence, Bangle rituals become a means to stop and recognize this violence. It is a cornerstone of Ewe life: the difference between dying naturally and peacefully (afemeku) or violently (vumeku) is important for the health and well-being of all living beings. For his second “photo-voice” Kwasi opted for a photo [Figure 2] he took of the Bangle fetish surrounded by the other Vodus: Kunde, Ablewa, Sunia Kompo, Sarca Bode, and in the right corner, Nana Wango, the grandmother crocodile. His father was a priest (bokonosofo) who had actually crafted the fetish more than 292 E. J. Montgomery Figure 2 “Bangle at Rest” (The Bangle fetish is a wild hunter, and they can kill in an instant, especially those that break gorovodu law). (Photo credit: Kwasi; used with permission) thirty years ago, so Kwasi had prayed to it his entire life. He told me on camera that the Bangle fetish is the most intense medicine/fetish (atike) in the entire pantheon, comprised of dozens of plants, elements, animal parts, bullets, knives, a bell and more. Without Kwasi choosing this photo the sheer depth in scale and scope of the fetish, and therefore the god itself, would have been missed. Kwasi’s adoration for Bangle also opened the research up to more nuanced forms of resistance and cultural reproduction tied to his mythology; in fact, it led me to comprehensive historical research on Ghanaian slavery between northern and coastal groups. In the second selection [Figure 2], Kwasi chose a nice tranquil ending; explaining that hard work and battle necessitate peaceful sleep, yawning as he pondered a title. He chose the title “Bangle at rest” because it was before he was offered goat and also libations of gin, so he had not yet imbibed and was therefore “sleeping.” Kwasi commented on Bangle’s archetype as a hunter, wielding many weapons, and capable of punishing evil-doers, even though here he is at rest. Bangle is the only Gorovodu spirit who leaves the shrine for the Sacred Forest, as a hunter and wild northern spirit; the fact he is at “rest” and “in battle” is a dichotomy I may have missed without this approach. When the gods/Vodus were gifted the fresh blood of their desired animals they began to appear on the head of adepts full of protein and vigor and ready to dance. This enormous transformation of energy and expenditure also deserves solace and respite. Kwasi was also tired, needing rest himself . In his final photo [Figure 3] Kwasi chose another shrine picture with me holding his son (who bears my name). For him the irony was too obvious, like Kunde and Bangle forging a father–son bond, as did I and his son whom he had named after me Erikivi, meaning “little Eric.” Since divination determined him to have my dzoto or ancestral soul at birth he was named after me, despite the fact that he is not my biological kin. The personhood of Erikivi was “pierced” with my Photo-Voice in Togo 293 Figure 3 “Les Deux Eric” (Father and son always close, Kunde and Bangle, Eric and Erikivi). (Photo credit: Kwasi; used with permission) own. While still pregnant, Kwasi’s wife experienced complications and I sponsored his safe delivery at a hospital in center-city. Some of his first words were English, despite living in francophone Togo, and he was known to resemble me in personality, being very hyper, a trickster of sorts, what they call a bandit (bevuvi). By now Erikivi is a teenager; attending secondary school and helping his father conduct fishing adventures. The part that Kwasi neglected to discuss was his recent tension with his son that same day. Erikivi himself was operating the camera quite regularly, shadowing my every move, and this of course attracted the jealous eye of his peers, so Kwasi was angry that Erikivi was not more discrete and humble regarding his activities. Erikivi in fact came to accompany me in the shrine because he had been disciplined by Kwasi and now came seeking some positive reinforcement and a shoulder to cry on. These three pictures are not only nutshell summaries of the event, but the important components of Kwasi himself: religion, family, work, and rest. Photo-Voice 2—Salah Ceremony, by Nenevi, Aged 26 (Adept/Spirit-Wife, Fish Peddler) The second instance involving Nenevi came together rather organically. She visited me and my colleague about halfway through our visit, insisting that the female voice needed to be included and that all we did was hang out with the priests and the drummers (who were males). We were trying to be respectful and were doing what men do, hanging around with other men. Actually she was quite right, and from there on we were more conscious of female agency and perspective. We gave her a digital camera and she became something of a photographer, gathering several hundred photos over just a few days. During the focus group and feedback screening for this article, she brought over sixty 294 E. J. Montgomery photos along, despite our request for three. Later in the summer we assisted her by going to town and printing up a few dozen of her select photos, and putting many in an album, framing a few as well. Nenevi had recently been bewitched by a jealous neighbor and with the birth of a healthy child and a new job cleaning at a nearby hotel she felt vindicated, attributing her new-found success to her morality and the protection of Sunia Compo, the trickster-god who possessed her regularly. Earlier in the year Sunia, as the god of stone, visited her in a dream and decapitated her neighbor while she was sleeping: for Nenevi this was a sign that this neighbor had been using witchcraft (aze) against her. At the time she had fallen sick and lost her regular job at a market. Nenevi had been regularly giving offerings to Sunia in both village shrines, and so her focus on the spirits for her photo-voice assignment was not a surprise. Nenevi chose the anthropomorphic paintings of Bangle and his sister the trickster Sunia Compo, and a male version of Nana Wango, the crocodile spirit who is a ferrymen and also keeper of the gates. Since the paintings [Figure 4] are staring back at the viewer she calls them “Vodu Watching,” and like Kwasi, opts for a caption referencing morality and the god’s ability to discipline adepts; and she reminded us of how Sunia had “watched out for her.” Although Rosenthal [1998, 2005] had written about Gorovodu as a system of law, until this exercise the pervasiveness of law had never been clear. Nenevi, like Sunia, was also her parent’s favorite child and was the only one to inherit some land along the coast, so she found a paradigmatic affinity with Sunia Compo. Ancestors and spirits are omnipresent, and the veil between this and the other world is notoriously thin in the Vodu worldview. Therefore actions in this world are observed by supernatural spirits having the power to punish and reward. Even though Bangle, Sunia and Wango were watching, Nenevi had been doing well, and thus welcomed their lookout. She even remarked that “human beings stare, but spirits appear,” a nod to the inversion of power between mortal and god. Figure 4 “Vodus Watching” (The spirits are strong and armed to the teeth, they see and hear all: pay attention, or you will be trapped and punished). (Photo credit: Nenevi; used with permission) Photo-Voice in Togo 295 Figure 5 “Bangle is Coming” (Bangle comes on the head with force, so we use amatsi [medicine water] so that the god will mount the horse gently). (Photo credit: Nenevi; used with permission) In her second photo [Figure 5], Nenevi took and chose a photo of her friend Dede, who is just in the beginning stages of possession trance, and the title is “Bangle is coming.” I used a similar photo in my article in the Shaman [2016] journal for the same reason Nenevi did: there was some real pull and power to Dede when she entered the throes of possession trance. Bangle and Sunia are not only siblings but are also very close both in myth and action. Rituals for Sunia and Bangle were regular events for Nenevi, and she regularly attended religious engagements with Dede throughout the coast, sometimes even sharing a taxi all the way to Ghana or Benin. In her caption she refers to the group effort and the sacred water all working to guide the spirit and make things “more gentle.” Nenevi exclaimed that the herb water (amatsi) of the gods allows the spirits clairvoyance and the power to heal. While watching over Dede during trance, Nenevi often absorbed great power, and seeing her friend possessed by Bangle was “the most beautiful thing and the whole point of everything,” as she explained during the feedback screening. Her desires in life were most fulfilled by Sunia, and she was very close to her brother, a military policeman and a warrior, like Bangle. In her third shot [Figure 6] Nenevi shows the Banglesi (wife of Bangle) in full trance after returning from the shrine with sacred chalk (alilo) on her face and in the customary regalia of the warrior spirit, black and white stripes with hints of red. For Nenevi, “Bangle has arrived,” and her write-up places Bangle’s dangerous potential and “king of the jungle” reputation. Nenevi also reviled the fact that everybody present in the image is staring at the tronsi in trance, a nod to the seductive power of the adept. For Nenevi, herself an adept (tronsi), to see Dede in the throes of possession was ecstasy and rapture, so much so that she helped to look after her herself throughout the entire 45-minute episode. During the focus group she actually had twelve photos of Dede as Banglesi and was unsure which to select. There were other possessions from the event as well, but she was stuck on Bangle (and honoring her friend Dede) from the start. When asked why, 296 E. J. Montgomery Figure 6 “Bangle has Arrived” (When Bangle dances everybody watches, waiting to hear his message. Always weary, Bangle will stalk prey like a lion, and he is the king of the jungle). (Photo credit: Nenevi; used with permission) she replied, “Sunia is the spoiled sister of the family and nobody takes care of her more than her big brother Bangle.” Just as Sunia and Bangle stick together, so do Nenevi and Dede, and to see her dear friend possessed by the spirit of a soldier was enthralling. Whereas Kwasi had opted to close his story with “Bangle at Rest,” for Nene it was “Bangle had (just) arrived,” marking the culmination of the salah ceremony for her. Photo-Voice 3—Salah Ceremony, by Koko, Aged 24 (Adept/Spirit-Wife, Market Woman) The third photo-voice trial comes from our dear friend and personal chef, Koko. She had some experience in the past assisting with translation, editing, and also as a videographer. Her third sequence of photos focused on the healing aspects of the day. Figure 7 is a picture of the Banglesi in possession as she begins to concoct “Voodoo medicine” in a bucket, which she was channeling from the spirit itself. After gathering the plants from the shrine, courtyard and forest the photo shows her amid the sacred medicinal water (amatsi). Since Koko has three young children who have been ill, and also lost another child at birth, perhaps she is attracted to the healing aspects for more personal reasons. In her second photo [Figure 8], which she labels “Smoke between worlds” she makes light of the sacred gunpowder and smoke said to open the doors between this world and the world of the ancestors and gods. In Figure 9, “Grandma knows Best,” Koko alludes to the collectivity and traditional method of healing which comes from a loving grandmother. When I asked her to tell me the story of her life as a book and to offer a book and chapter titles, she called her book “Life is death: where is god?” Her final chapter she called “Return to sickness.” It was obvious that she had experienced a great deal, herself fighting sickle-cell anemia and malaria. Photo-Voice in Togo 297 Figure 7 “Voodoo Medicine” (Bangle told us to prepare the babies for ritual baths; too many were falling sick so he gathered plants to protect and heal them). (Photo credit: Koko; used with permission) For her the health of her children was everything, and she turned to the Gorovodus to assist her and her family with these desires. The three sets of photo essays pivoted around three key symbols to Ewe culture: morality, possession and healing (atikevodu), but what makes this method unique is the fact that these themes were coded and derived from the participants themselves. Photo-Voice 4—Salah Ceremony, by Eric Montgomery (Devotee, Anthropologist) One day and evening event, salah, was documented here photographically by three villagers and one anthropologist. This photo-essay offers multiple ways of seeing and understanding one salah ceremony of the Gorovodu religion. For Figure 8 “Smoke between Worlds” (We summon all the vodus to come and bless the children, witchcraft is real and can kill). (Photo credit: Koko; used with permission) 298 E. J. Montgomery Figure 9 “Grandma knows best” (The children don’t know what is best for them but grandma does, the baby will get well because grandma [nana] knows best). (Photo credit: Koko; used with permission) my sequence [Figures 10–12] I chose some images that were important to me, but was also affected by the others’ choices and comments as well. The first photo [Figure 10] is of a group of participating devotees clapping incessantly against the rhythm: this “thanks-beating” (akpefofo) demonstrates the centrality of collaboration and the importance of the drum and rhythm to both possession and healing. What used to sound off-beat and chaotic had slowly become a sound that I craved, the multi-meter and accentuated patterning of Vodu music and rhythm. In Figure 11, which I label “Plants and Spirits of the Forest” I opted to Figure 10 Akpefofo (thanks beating), literally giving thanks through relentless clapping while also keeping the time. (Photo credit: Author) Photo-Voice in Togo 299 Figure 11 “Plants and Spirits of the Forest” (These plants have medicinal properties tested and affirmed by Western clinical trials; these two leaves and barks heal sickle-cell anemia, sorcery and hypertension. They are also charred and placed in the Bangle fetish). (Photo credit: Author) Figure 12 “Remembering Slavery: Mama Tchamba Vodu.” Mama Tchamba is the vodu of the spirit of slaves, and like the gorovodus are of northern origin. Many of these slaves performed labor for and married into Ewe lineages. (Photo credit: Author) 300 E. J. Montgomery display plants that were used in the healing in their natural context where they are harvested. This sacred grove is attached to my home in the village, and is tended to by the assistant and praying priest of the village. Many of the most indelible memories of my research have taken place here; it was also where my wife and I first got engaged and exchanged our own sacred medicines, amulets and vows. Later on we realized that these and many other plants making up the physical composition of the fetishes have many healing properties which have been tested in clinical trials in Western settings and continue to attract scholars across many disciplines [Vannier and Montgomery 2016]. My final photo [Figure 12] is of a Mama Tchamba shrine dedicated to the memory and legacy of northern slaves who made some Ewes rich and also became part of their identity as women married into the group. Since Bangle is northern, and some say a slave-turned-warrior god, I felt this image would “round-out” the photo essay, even though the frame had little to do with salah itself. There was also a former professor, himself an adept of Bangle, who had recently perished, and was my mentor and first guide to the village. Thus we all had a fascination with and certain respect for Lord Bangle, hunter and warrior. These dozen photos contextualized by the people themselves are a testament to both shared visual anthropology and photo-voice as methods of ethnographic analysis. Where would this article be without the photos? What if photo-voice was not employed and I alone chose the photos and captions? Would the reader know more or less about salah? And to what extent and why? There can never be a fully shared ethnography, but photo-voice and shared visual ethnography offer us hope of getting closer to a collective way of seeing culture than purely textbased approaches. Vodu is an embodied social system that needs to be felt, tasted, and memorialized collectively; photo-voice allows for a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of Vodu rituals, performance and the personal agencies of the actors themselves. DISCUSSION The village of Gbedala is serene, but also changing. What used to be coconut-palm groves and gardens have slowly been replaced by factories, pipelines and ports. The village is squeezed between an encroaching ocean tide on the south, and a colossal gas and oil pipeline to the north. Construction at the nearby port is constant, attracting business people and products from all over the globe, and during the night one can see dozens of barges lit up for miles around waiting to unload or collect cargo. Meanwhile, perched between the violent rising tide and slew of factories and pipes is the village of Gbedala. Here Gorovodu (“Voodoo” of the kola nut) is the main religion, and more than ninety percent of the 1,200 villagers worship the Gorovodu gods: Kunde, Ablewa, Bangle, etc. Even with a rising GDP and economy in Togo, most Ewes are marginalized by a northern-run military and government that illegally took power by the gun fifty years ago. Gorovodu ritual assists the villagers with health, travel, fortune and safety. And “Voodoo spirits” and shrines have been a part of the village since its origin in the 1880s. Photo-Voice in Togo 301 This photo-essay approach included an expansion into the senses, especially visual and aural modes, because by way of mimesis and possession the Ewe make the past present by stimulating myth into action—and the ritual theater of performance is the key symbol and pinnacle of Vodu culture. Ceremonies serve as master narratives for meaning, which when decoded from the inside reveal a great deal about the system itself and the agents operating within it. This article offers a corrective approach to representations of Vodu by using photo-voice and drawing upon critical traditions of shared anthropology. Ewe Gorovodu worshippers long for grand ceremonies which celebrate their multiple spirits, local and foreign. Spirit possession, well-being and revelation are the formal goal of the religion. And adepts (tronsi) aspire for the northern medicine gods to inhabit their bodies (mimesis), dancing themselves into existence, opening personhood, liberating and transforming one’s spirit. Traditional ethnographic approaches “from above” sometimes struggle to capture the meaning of Ewe Vodu culture; participant-observation and ethnographic writing both fall short in explaining the deeply nuanced meaning of Vodu performance and ritual. Vodu is an oral tradition better sensed and felt than explained; better participated in collectively than explained from above. Historically anthropologists have investigated the oral/literate dichotomy across cultures and determined them to be distinct realms of knowing and being in the world [Goody and Watt 1963; Tannen 1982; Ong and Hartley 2013]. Normally this has involved the “literate” cultures occupying a privileged orthodox position compared to the “nonliterate” oral cultures. There is also the issue of “anthropology from above” where perspectives and methods lean toward traditional literate approaches that do “more to mystify than to clarify” cultures such as Ewe Vodu. In an attempt to heed the visual anthropologist Sarah Pink’s call [2006], the Togo “subjects” in the field learned to operate cameras and microphones, and also determined the content and direction of recording and translation through self-organized interviews, focus groups, feedback screenings and shared presentation of photos and video. Although this approach was only applied intensely for a short time, it proved a fruitful pilot study for forthcoming research. One of these “key” events was a salah ceremony held on a Friday in June, 2013, chosen by each participant for its spiritual power. This ceremony epitomizes the link between Islam and Gorovodu and is filled with disparate symbols and acts ranging from cross-ethnic spirit possession to the profession of the faith, call to prayer, and indigenous medicinal and musical healing. Where words fell short the power of the camera in the hands, and ultimately the mouths, of the actors themselves allowed for a more shared and objective representation of Ewe Vodu culture and world-view. The idea to employ participatory film and photo-voice was born in 2013 while doing ethnographic and visual research in Togo. We held a screening of our first two films and wanted feedback from our assistants, especially Kwasi, Nenevi and Koko who operated microphones and cameras during the shooting. Upon stumbling upon Wang and Redwood-Jones’s [2001, 2005] work with photo-voice in China, we tried this same method in our home village. Our pilot study was short but useful, only coming to be when a small focus group on religious syncretism led by the main priest yielded incredibly valuable information. We held a 302 E. J. Montgomery meeting at the shrine and asked them to vote on what to capture: choices included shrine prayers, initiations and various ceremonies, trips to the fetish market, the fishing port, and other aspects of “daily life.” At the suggestion of Koko the group finally decided that a salah ceremony on a Friday at the beginning of a Fetatrotro (turning-of-the-year ceremony) would be our “master narrative.” The three devotees were each given a digital camera and microphone, and also had access to a video camera which they would share throughout the ceremony, the results of which have already been unveiled. They were asked to record whatever they wanted and to take the best six photos or “screen shots” to bring to our weekly “feedback screening” for discussion, before eventually cutting it down to three. They also provided a nutshell summary and biography of the particular photo, and were prompted to offer a caption and heading for each picture. For our purposes here, each participant coded and chose their three “favorite” photos, complete with caption and title headings. Koko, a local market-women and granddaughter of the head village priest (bokonosofo) Bisi, had previous experience with a camera, taking it with her to market for three days earlier during our visit and also documenting “normal time” with her son, mother, nieces and nephews: cooking, cleaning, reading, parenting and playing. For the salah ceremony she actually opted to take all of her photo-voices from the video camera she operated, taking 60 or more screenshots and reducing them to the three images provided here. Nenevi, a spirit-wife (tronsi) of Bangle (a Banglesi), is a fish and petty-goods peddler, and not surprisingly her final images were of a fellow Bangle adept in trance during the salah ceremony. Kwasi, the son of Bisi, a fishermen and esteemed drummer, had been working with me as a close assistant since the 1990s. His final photos are indicative of his gender, status and own “way of seeing” as well. Kwasi, Koko and Nenevi did not just take part in the photo-voice experiment; they also served as co-directors and producers during religious functions throughout the summer of 2013. After which, we held a collaborative reflection and coding session to evaluate and analyze the findings. All of these subjects are members of the local Gorovodu shrine, and this opportunity for a photo essay was welcomed by all; in fact it triggered ethical dilemmas as others also wanted their voices to be heard, and also a chance to earn some extra money. Bokonosofo Bisi held a meeting with elder men and women to deal with all the maso-maso (conflict) that stemmed from our experiment. In the end divination was held and the spirits not only approved the research but also scolded some of the complainers, whom we tried to accommodate nonetheless. We put cameras in the hands of some who do not always have choice or agency in their lives, and each reported that this exercise increased their collective knowledge of their trade, the Gorovodu spirits, and their own lives. It gave them a chance to look at themselves and others from afar, empowered with a camera, which they all said was a liberating endeavor. Nobody in the village to my knowledge even owned a camera, so the least we could do was ask them to tell us their stories. In the end, cameras were gifted to all the participants, and I can hardly wait to see all their photos on my next trip to Togo. Their photo essays were operational photo-voices where they served as the judge and jury of a cultural event they chose (salah). Their ideas were translated from French and Ewe into English toward the end of the trip. Photo-Voice in Togo 303 Although not a primary faeature of this article, they were also asked to share their life-histories, which they were asked to create as both a book and a mural, complete with titles and headings for each chapter and sequence of their lives [Andrea Sankar and Mark Luborksy, Wayne State University, personal communication, 2003]. Ironically, the mural framework for the story of their lives yielded much more vibrant details than their life-histories as a book—an example of the visual conquering the textual. They were prompted to title each chapter and scene after each interview, as I already mentioned regarding Koko. Kwasi titled his life story “From Sacred Bush to Dangerous City,” his mural he titled “Swallowing Smoke in the Rat Race,” actually reflecting Bob Marley’s song that was playing on my laptop during the interview. Kwasi drew beautiful pictures of various “Voodoo” spirits, drums, boats, and other key aspects of his life. Nenevi titled her life-history as book, “Trust Kunde and remain humble,” the heading of her mural was “African Women making do,” which was accompanied with beautiful sketches of African women doing a myriad activities. For Koko, her book biography originally referenced sickness, but she wanted to be more positive after seeing Kwasi’s response. The second time her book was titled “Conversations with God,” and her daily mural she called “Always and only Fish, Fish, Fish” (apa, apa, kaseagame, apa). Despite their enormous contributions to the periurban labor force in Southern Togo, the market-women, taxi drivers and fishermen are rarely heard from. This photo essay using photo-voice had the same three purposes here as it did for Wang et al. in rural China twenty years ago: (1) empower the marginal, (2) increase collective knowledge, and (3) inform anthropologists and the broader society about the daily lives and concerns of everyday people [Wang et al. 1996: 1392]. The fact they chose to investigate salah over all other topics is itself indicative of their priorities and world-view, namely their “Voodoo first” philosophy. Photo-voice as a method has proven useful on issues of well-being, ecology, woman’s rights, migration and poverty—in China, Costa Rica, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and elsewhere—becoming a participatory assessment tool for “documenting the experiences” of the voiceless [Green and Kloos 2009; Labacher et al. 2012; López et al. 2003; Wang 1997]. It has also been “over-emphasized” for its participatory nature, which is also evident here because it reveals while also disguising. It is in this light we introduced the Ewe Gorovodu context, where people are also marginalized and silenced, by structural poverty, poor governance and state-sponsored terror. The Ewes are a majority ethnic group in their country but have been under the thumb of a militant northern regime since the late 1960s. The Eyadema regime continues to this day, with the son Faure Gnassingbe now “serving” a third term, after his father’s death in 2005. The resistance to this hegemony is covert and seemingly passive, but the fact that Bangle and Sunia are invoked highlights the centrality of the resistance to state hegemony, for it takes a warrior god and master trickster to escape the wrath of the military, or crippling structural poverty. For Ewe Vodu worshippers truth is determined by an array of gods and the connections they have with them. Like the Songhay peoples of Niger, Ewe adepts “marry” their gods and possession is the formal goal of Gorovodu, Jinn, Zar, and Vodu [Boddy 1989; Friedson 2009; Masquelier 2001]. Although religion was 304 E. J. Montgomery never prompted to our associates during life-history and photo-voice sessions, all three subjects mentioned a “Voodoo” god and used it in their titling; they also chose a “Voodoo ceremony” to film and photograph. By becoming northerners, slaves, foreigners and the like in trance, the Ewes, like their northern Songhay, Hauka, and other regional neighbors, mimetically become the other, and signify other ethnic groups, all the while coming to terms with their own crisis of representation: who they are, where they are going, and what makes them whole. In the Gorovodu world of the Ewe where “sounds and sentiments” create reality, and where discursive texts can fall short, photo-voice and visual ethnography can enlighten [Feld 1995]. Photo-voice and shared ethnography offer us a way through the maze of interpretation and representation; however, they are no panacea out of the crisis in representation that will entail more than a photo method. According to Jay Ruby, “Visual anthropology logically proceeds from the belief that culture is manifested through visible symbols embedded in gestures, ceremonies, rituals, and artifacts situated in constructed and natural environments” [1980]. Humans privilege our sense of seeing over all others, and sometimes the visual enhances other senses as well. Today culture is more constrained by the person behind the camera than the camera itself; viewing pictures thus results in an ideology, much like text, conflated with power and inversion. The camera can also invert power; or rather empower the very participants ethnography seeks to portray. Photo-voice offers control to the agents themselves, allowing them to construct the parameters and arcs of the story, but it cannot solve the entire representational crisis. Feedback screenings and focus groups extend another hermeneutic layer by allowing for individual and collective interpretations of footage. Ewe Vodu culture is an oral and agnostically toned culture where the spirits of ancestors, gods and witches abound. Thus the rhythms of life are colored by constant rituals as mechanisms for bridging borders, both past and present: dead/alive, master/slave, body/spirit, northern/southern, and more. Allowing the adepts themselves to determine the contexts and meanings extends beyond a “shared anthropology” and moves closer to an agent-centered approach. Many anthropologists have attempted a more shared and interactive approach to ethnography [Biella 1997; Feld 1995]. Biella uses shared techniques to narrate the spirit possession legacy of Mama Kone among the Maasai in Eastern Africa [ibid.]. He and Feld claim they “matured” and improved as ethnographers because of the camera, and the participatory and shared nature of their research [Lovejoy and Steele 2005; Pink 2007]. The promise of sensory anthropology has accompanied the trend toward shared ethnography, and when joined together they can be very productive lenses for capturing African culture [Geurts 2003; Howes and Classen 2014; Stoller 1992]. Capturing the Ewe deep sensorial with the camera can help us define problems, as was the case with salah, where we learned of nuanced relationships between possession, witchcraft, sickness and healing. Photo-voice and enhanced visual modes may not only allow the subaltern to speak, but also provide more intelligible communication of what it is they mean and desire. Here we discussed the outcomes of these experiences by analyzing a salah scene from a Gorovodu ceremony centered on spirit possession, healing and the eradication of witchcraft. The embedded nature of these concepts can be Photo-Voice in Togo 305 difficult to digest by written text; however, seeing the adepts in photos and the actual administration of the plants and spirit possession episodes as well offers a more holistic and objective understanding of the rituals that might otherwise be difficult to comprehend. As Ruby predicted, the anthropologist as imagemaker and “scholar of the visible world” has become increasingly commonplace [1980: 163]. As Cain also relates [2009] concerning her work on participatory film in South Africa, understanding film and video as tools for change can lead to advocacy and applied anthropological success. She insists that participatory video within Africa may enable marginalized groups to represent themselves and achieve social change. For MacDougall [1991] and Banks and Morphy [1997] expanding the definition, methodology and theory of the visual is crucial for, as Barbash and Taylor write, visual anthropology “offers possibilities for anthropology, and in particular for the representation and evocation of lived experience, that are unavailable to writing” [1997: 535]. Understanding the deeply entrenched relationship between plant medicine (atike) and spirit possession, ritual and economy, local and global, and other dialectics became clearer with the employment of photo-voice, and this idea arose only after long-term filmmaking among the same villages [Montgomery and Vannier 2012a, 2012b]. CONCLUSION Despite the recent progression and growth of ethnographic film and photo-voice alike, anthropology continues to struggle with a crisis of representation. Perhaps no culture has been more mystified and misrepresented than “Voodoo” culture. Photo-voice and shared qualitative approaches offer a way through the morass of representation by equipping the agents themselves with the tools of the researcher, and thus opening doors previously half-shut, allowing for more holistic and emic understandings of the most important aspects of culture: language, religion and identity. Photo-voice cannot release us entirely from the problems of representation; like all methods, it has its problems. It can be overly celebrated for its participatory qualities when the empowered researcher is still the “judge and jury” of the content, even if it comes from others. I am confident that scholarly and erudite readers alike can gain something different (perhaps more complete) from innovative videography like photo-voice. The ethnographic montage here was chosen, documented and translated by the devotees themselves in an attempt to build a more vivid, holistic and relativistic take on “Voodoo.” Photo-voice and participatory filmmaking complement the quest for a more complete and shared ethnography, but it can never be totally complete or shared. This photo-essay investigated connections between possession, medicine, ritual and visual anthropology; concepts normally studied in silos and viewed as distinct areas of research. The multivocality of this one slice of time was immense, and if time permitted we could also discuss other themes stemming from these same feedback screenings, including allusions to politics, economics, globalization, sorcery, identity, magic and kinship. Photo-voice allows for new ways of seeing not only salah and Vodu ritual, but also crosses realms within the confines of anthropology itself: anthropology of religion, applied anthropology, medical anthropology, and 306 E. J. Montgomery more; themes that could otherwise be missed, swept under the rug, or cast into oblivion from the academic record. For research into political economy, ritual, identity and the like, the camera and microphone can be more adaptable and useful than written modes of analysis, especially when the subjects are given a (photo) voice. In my anthropology of religion and peace-and-conflict courses, a good portion of attention is dedicated to Ewe Vodu culture, in readings, assignments and of course exams. Since integrating the films [Chasing the Spirit, 2012; African Herbsmen, 2012] into the classroom there has been a noticeable improvement in the critical understanding and reflection by students regarding cultural content, in both exams and research papers. Hearing the drum and dance music, seeing the episodes of spirit possession, and the temptation of the almighty moving image, seems to shed more light on Ewe culture in less time than an ethnography or academic article may. By empowering others to take part in ethnographic explanation we can garner a more holistic and multi-layered trajectory of culture, and not just with one ceremony like salah but across the spectrum. We also can create a multi-layered cultural cake of individual and independent voices, instead of the ethnographer-as-expert approach which perpetuates a crisis of representation within the field. By allowing the villagers and members of the shrine themselves to dictate the who, what, when, why, and where of research—an attempt at “shared ethnography”—resulting films and texts are appreciated and consumed more fully by students and subjects alike [Omrani 2012; Rouch 1995]. Rouch’s quest for a truly “shared ethnography” may be impossible, yet his vision is no less desirable. When working among the Ewes many asked to help and learn the basics of the camera. Small focus groups and feedback screenings turned into “nights out at the movies” with everybody crowding into the compound to watch the footage, which we projected onto the actual shrine wall, with people pointing and laughing at the screen. Photo-voice empowers the actors, thus triggering emotions, because visuals elicit stronger reactions in people than words. So sacrosanct is spirit possession that the adepts themselves are not allowed to see photo or video of themselves while in trance: this could offend the spirit and can also create problems for an ethnographer. Visual images help users engage with the content, and such emotional reactions influence information retention. This is because the visual memory is encoded in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, the same area where emotions are processed. Ethnography having numerous brilliant images, and accompanying videos, is more attractive to students. Unlike text and discursive approaches, pictures, both still and moving, enrich communication and stimulate emotional responses, thus facilitating learning and understanding. In Ewe Gorovodu culture this is even more pronounced because orality offers an entirely different way of seeing and being than text-based culture of books and journals. Photo-voice and participatory filmmaking are “enhanced” visual methods imbibed with the spirit of the actors themselves, giving marginalized groups and individuals a chance to better document their own lives, and tell their own stories. Thick descriptions of events such as salah become more empathetic with the advent of photo-voice, allowing for greater understanding, and offering a more shared and empathetic understanding of Photo-Voice in Togo 307 Vodu/“Voodoo,” which has for too long been misrepresented both in and beyond anthropology. 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In Spirit Possession: Modernity and Power in Africa. Heike Behrend and Ute Luig, eds. Pp. 111–123. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. FILMOGRAPHY Montgomery, Eric J., and Christian N. Vannier (dirs.) 2012a African Herbsmen: Ritual and Healing along the Bight of Benin. Seattle: Amazon; color, 37 mins. 2012b Chasing the Spirit: Gorovodu in Southern Togo. Eric Montgomery, dir. Seattle: Amazon; color, 66 mins.