Voodoo traditional healers

Voodoo traditional healers,
In case of illness, visiting traditional healer is still much more popular in Africa than visiting regular doctor with proper education. The magic power of herbs, animal body parts and good or evil spirits is widely believed all over the continent. In West Africa, the knowledge about healing usually is passed from generation to generation. The images of Voodoo traditional healers were taken in Benin and Togo.
more images of Voodoo religion in Benin, West Africa

Mami Wata woman priest, the fluid that she spits is a mixture of herbs and alcohol, this ceremony is made to secure fertility



Traditional pharmacy, some animals body parts are used for healing



Traditional healer Salanon in Abomey


traditional healer Salanon with portraits of his father and grandfather, he claimed because his magic powers his father leaved over 200 years


Inside of Salanon's hut


Mami Wata woman-priest




young adepts after the ceremony in Aneho, Togo

Calais illegal immigrants

Two weeks ago I’ve been in Calais, France working on illegal immigrants story.
Calais is the meeting point of illegal immigrants mostly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Somalia. They spend months, sometimes years traveling clandestinely to Europe. Calais is on the edge of English Channel ,the migrants try to get in the trucks which cross the channel and travel secretly to their dreamland- the UK. Of course this is not an easy task…
There was a refugee camp in the nearby Sangette, but it was closed in 2002. So now there is around 1500 illegal migrants from Asia and Africa camping in makeshift slums and huts in the woods around Calais. They have no access to water or health facilities.
The easy part of the job was obviously to shoot free food distribution at the place where everyone takes photographs. My goal was to shoot the pictures of migrants trying to get to trucks.
After arrival, I teamed up with a BBC TV crew. They were working on the immigrants story as well. It was just safer to work together. First, we went to shoot in “the jungle” – a no-go area in the middle of the woods where illegal immigrants have their slum city.
This area is not safe… last August a woman student of journalism was gang-raped there, she wanted to do an interview…
Then the tricky part came…
We were shooting the images from the car. As soon as the migrants recognized that we were filming they started throwing stones at us, so we changed our car and one more time managed to approach them without being recognized. It was fun, but it was a bit scary as well.
BBC illegal immigrants story HERE

More of my images Calais illegal immigrants HERE

Trance

Over a month ago I have received a call from polish edition of National Geographic. They were looking for a cover picture for Polish issue of NG. The topic was Voodoo. I have send them my images, they chose one of mine and designed four covers –one with my picture and three others with somebody else’s pictures. The magazine is out now, unfortunately not with my picture in the coverL Disappointing… but I also must admit that the cover picture that they have chosen is really great!

More voodoo by myself HERE