The Media Blitz

I'm preparing for a forthright of media appearances and two or three photo talks that will take place in Hanoi about my photo book: H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam.

The "media blitz" will take place during the first two weeks of November 2016, and I'm slated to be interviewed on television by Vietnam News Agency (VNA), VTV4 and Vietnam National Television.

I've also been interviewed by various Vietnamese newspapers, such as the National Times, Thanh Nien Newspaper, Viet Nam News (Expat Column) and Hanoi Grapevine. A lengthier feature will soon be published in Ho Chi Minh City's Oi Vietnam magazine. 

Takehiko Yagi | Holi

Photo � Takehiko Yagi-All Rights Reserved

"I have been fascinated by the colors of the sacred festival of Holi for nine years now. I fell in love with the festival for the first time when I saw it on television as a high school student." 

This is very possibly a first. 

My Twitter feed has the link to the photo gallery Diving Into The Colors of Holi by Japanese photographer Takehiko Yagi, and naturally I followed it to view it.

Scrolling down the intensely colored images of the well known Indian festival, I stopped at the above photograph, showing the spiritual intensity on the faces of devotees in the temple of Banke Bihari in Vrindavan, the epicenter of the Holi festival. 

I recognized this exact scene because I was there as well....at the same time, and photographed these very same devotees. And then I remembered being shoulder to shoulder with an Asian photographer, who, now I know, was Takehiko Yagi. We were both swathed in scarves and eye protections; our cameras protected by makeshift (or ready-made) plastic covers, and we had our backs to the stage where the idol was periodically shown to the mass of devotees in the temple's hall.

This is my own photograph:

Photo � Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

While the scenes at Banke Bihari Temple, the epicenter of Holi devotional revelry in Vrindavan, provide incredibly compelling photographs of devotees covered in color, I remember concluding that the scenes were also repetitive, and there was the risk of hitting the point of diminishing returns after a while.

Most photographers prefer to remain to the sides of the temple, but not Mr. Yagi or me. We preferred venturing in the courtyard where the frenetic activity was, and where we were most at risk from the Holi weaponry. I recall being drenched in colored water thrown at the crowds by the temple's priests.

Takehiko Yagi was born in Fukuoka, and attended the Tamagawa University College of Agriculture, and started his career as a professional photographer in 2014. He was awarded
a Nikkei National Geographic Photo Prize in that year, and was Grand prize winner of the 4th Nikkei National Geographic Photo Prize.

Hanoi Grapevine | The Spirit Mediums of Hanoi

I'm very pleased that Hanoi Grapevine has featured news of my photo book H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam on its popular portal.

Hanoi Grapevine describes itself an important and active promoter of the arts in Vietnam. It provides bilingual content of high-quality art and culture happenings in the contemporary landscape of the country and offer reviews by interested, informed and opinionated commentators. 

It has also announced that Hanoi�s expats and local citizens will have chance to talk to me about �?o M?u and H?u �?ng when I am in Hanoi in early November for a number of appearances at different photo talk venues.

Fuller details will be announced on this blog once I have the firm dates. The venues are in central Hanoi and are popular for art, photography and music events.

My Book's Back Story | The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam

All Photographs � 2016 Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved

I remember September 12, 2014 very well. I was in Sa Pa, the famous hill station in northern Viet Nam, and despite the early morning humidity, the Black Hmong vendors were already waiting for tourists. I was walking on Fansipan Road, bantering with some of them, when I heard religious music wafting from a nondescript building. I asked the vendors and was told it was a temple. I walked in and met women dressed in red traditional clothes who, through sign language, told me that a ceremony would start at 9:00 am.

This is how my two-year long journey into the world of �?o M?u, the indigenous Vietnamese mother goddess religion and h?u d?ng, the ritual of spirit mediumship, started. Totally by accident. Serendipitously. 

I was flabbergasted that I hadn't heard of �?o M?u before. My so-called specialty as a travel photographer is/was ethno-photography with special interest in esoteric religions and cults. And here, on a silver platter, was an ancient indigenous religion that had escaped my notice. To me, that was analogous at how cats react to catnip...the "happy" receptors in my brain went haywire.

It was after attending another 'stumbled-on' h?u d?ng ceremony, this time two days later in the market town of Bac Ha, that I resolved to explore the religion, its rituals, its history and its practitioners. 

I had quickly researched the topic online, and discovered -to my surprise-  that no non-Vietnamese photographer had documented the religion and the ceremonies. There were commercial videos on YouTube and other sites, but no serious photographic essays or documentaries. It was at this point that I took it as a sign that I had to be the first to do that...and eventually this evolved into publishing the book: H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam.

Sharing The Ceremonial Wheat Wine Known As "Ru?u C?n". Photo �2016 Kim Nga

It took more than 18 months since that first accidental encounter with a �?o M?u religious ceremony to reach the point where I felt I was ready to produce a substantial book about my journey into the depths of this esoteric religion, in its sacred rituals and music. 

Apart from the five or six trips of two weeks each to Hanoi, from attending over two dozen h?u d?ng ceremonies in the capital, suburbs and further afield, and from interviewing some of the most popular spirit mediums, I researched �?o M?u in as many publications and books that I could find. It wasn't readily available, and even the venerable New York Public Library wasn't able to find a specific historical tome in its inventory. I learned a lot from interviewing the mediums and by observing their mannerisms and styles during the ceremonies and in social settings.

On reviewing the material I had gleaned from my research and trips, I concluded my book would end up being between 150-200 pages, with about 100 full page color photographs.  I carefully chose and edited my photographs out of the thousands I had taken, and I started typing the manuscript.

The next step was to choose a print-on-demand publisher. I had toyed with the idea of using a Kickstarter campaign to fund the publishing costs for an offset printing, but decided against it as too time-consuming and potentially a time-waster. After a few tries, I settled on Blurb Books.

I have had past experience with Blurb Books, when I published two monochrome photo books:  Bali: Island of Gods and DARSHAN, but this would be the first time that I'd use them for a color photo book. Setting that aside, I had a number of reasons to use this popular print-on-demand publisher.

Firstly, I was used to Blurb Books' BookWright free tool, which allows users to publish custom photo books, magazines, and novels in either print or ebook format. I wasn't interested in its templates as I wanted total creative control on my book's layout, but I could use the rest of its features, including the ability to eventually produce the book in printed form and ebook.

At work using Blurb Books' BookWright

Secondly, Blurb Books has its own bookstore for books, and has a option which allows its users to publish their books on Amazon. Thirdly, I knew that Blurb Books could produce my books very quickly, and could deliver them efficiently to my eventual buyers.

This brings me to my efforts to get an international publishing house interested in my book. I collected a few of my best photographs of h?u d?ng ceremonies, added a few paragraphs on the religion's background and emailed TASCHEN, TeNeues-USA, Phaidon and others. Most of the publishing houses demurred or didn't respond.

Being very pleased at the quality, layout and color reproduction of the dummy test book, I ordered a hard cover large format landscape version of the book, and offered it for sale as a special edition on my own website at a discount to start the marketing momentum. Not only were the results very encouraging, but the feedback made it all worthwhile.

�?o M?u (and its H?u �?ng rituals) is a fascinating syncretic religious practice mixing a number of artistic elements, such as music, singing, dance and the use of costumes. It also happens to be a joyous religious ceremony, without the dour, morose, guilt-ridden and fearsome ambiances of some other established religions we all know about.

The ceremonies are often joyous and engage the audience.

I had remarked in an earlier blog post that I had found a calling with this book project. My photographic expeditions-workshops were characterized with constantly having a definite documentary objective to them. Whether the objectives were Sufi festivals, obscure Hindu religious events such the gathering of the Vellichappadu and Theyyam, or the Cao Dai tradition in central Vietnam, I always had an intellectual, and not only a photographic, interest in such esoteric activities, and those who joined my trips seemed to have shared that. However, being practically unable to spend but just a few days at such events meant that significant �coverage� was impossible, and this frustrated me. Spending weeks in a single location or on one single religious event was impractical with a half dozen or more other photographers in tow.

Literally stumbling on the Vietnamese religious tradition of �?o M?u, and its ceremonial tangential manifestations such as H?u �?ng and H�t Ch?u Van in late 2014 has literally supercharged, and reinvigorated, my enthusiasm for documentary photography, audio recording, storytelling and multimedia production over these past two years.

Pondering what to do with a gift of money and a lit cigarette during a ceremony. Photo � Hoang Anh

The special editions ready to go.

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 Sup�rieur 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, Lib�ration, 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.

Berta Tilmantaite | Burma - Myanmar

Photo � Berta Tilmantaite -All Rights Reserved

I am saddened by the recent news of a major earthquake affecting Myanmar, and at the loss of life and at the reported damage to over 150 historic pagodas in Bagan...so I was glad to have noticed the work of Berta Tilmantaite on my Facebook timeline-wall.

It's not as much on Bagan and its pagodas, but is a visual and musical journey through Myanmar, specifically while Berta and a friend were traveling on a public boat from Yangon to Pathein, and onwards to Bagan. They stayed on the deck with all other people - locals, traveling to small villages along the river. I recall taking this public boat at dawn from Mandalay to Bagan, and it was a wonderful trip.

Berta Tilmantait� is a Lithuanian multimedia journalist, photographer and videographer. Her visual stories from different parts of the world often focus on the connection between human and nature. Berta has BA in Journalism from Vilnius University (Lithuania), also took a course in Photojournalism at Danish School of Media and Journalism. She holds MA in International Multimedia Journalism (University of Bolton/Beijing Foreign Studies University). Currently Berta works as a freelance multimedia journalist and photographer. Her work has been published in various media outlets, such as National Geographic, Al Jazeera, Geographical, GEO, Rhythms Monthly, China daily and others. She also occasionally lectures at Vilnius University and VGT University in Vilnius, Lithuania

H?u B�ng | The Cult of The Immoral

I found this fascinating short movie on my Facebook timeline. The many readers of my blog know of the recent publication of my book H?u �?ng: The Spirit Mediums of Viet Nam (on Amazon), and this short movie which was filmed in 1934 not only fits perfectly fits in the book's narrative, but also provides me with an incomparable view of the past, and how the ceremonies I documented were conducted over 80 years ago.

If the movie doesn't play, click here to watch it on YouTube.

Let me start by the title of the movie: in French it reads the cult of the immoral. French colonialism in Vietnam lasted more than six decades, and by the late 1880s it controlled Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which it referred to as Indochine Francais. It became one of France�s most lucrative colonial possessions.

The French justified their imperialism as being a �civilising mission�, a pledge to develop backward nations. Consequently, most indigenous traditions were considered as barbaric, especially those that related to religion.

In my book, I highlight the role of P�re L�opold Michel Cadi�re (1869�1955), a French missionary who wrote 250 research works about Vietnamese history, religions, customs, linguistics and who described �?o M?u (the worship of mother goddesses in Vietnam) as being a cult, ignoring its ancient history and indigenous character throughout Vietnam. The French, through brutal force, intimidation and jail sentences, tried to eradicate the religion but this only reinforced its practice, but pushed it underground.

I've attended a large number of h?u d?ng ceremonies during my research, and have not encountered female singers in the ch?u van that perform during the ceremonies. I was told that only males could be ch?u van singers, however in the movie it is most certainly a woman's voice that is heard accompanying the medium during her performances.

By the way, h?u d?ng, H?u B�ng or L�n d?ng are interchangeable names for the ritual of spirit mediumship practiced in the Vietnamese indigenous religion, �?o M?u.

The socialist government frowned on the practice but relented a few years ago as it was viewed as extolling the traditional values of the Vietnamese, their virtues, history and culture. It is now being considered by UNESCO for inclusion in its Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity List.

However, many Vietnamese I met in New York City and elsewhere in the United States still consider it as a prohibited activity, or as superstition. A few have never heard of it.