Pierre Verger (Paris, França 1902 - Salvador BA 1996)
Pierre Verger was a photographer, ethnologist, anthropologist and writer. He learned photography from Pierre Boucher (1908 - 2000) in 1932, when he bought his first Rolleiflex. Throughout his career, he traveled to many countries and worked with European and American newspapers and magazines, such as Paris-Soir, in 1934; the Daily Mirror, from 1935 to 1936; Life, in 1937; Match, in 1938; Argentina Libre and Mundo Argentino, in 1941 and 1942; and O Cruzeiro, from 1945 until the late 1950s.
In 1934, together with other photographers, he founded the agency Alliance Photo, which managed and distributed the material produced by its members. He moved to Salvador in 1946 and devoted himself to the study of Black religions and cultures in Africa and Brazil, a field in which he became one of the most respected specialists, publishing numerous books on the subject. He was initiated into the divination cult in Benin, receiving the title of Fatumbi (reborn through the grace of Ifá).
The first phase of his work is marked by the publication of photographic books, from 1931 onward, in which he recorded the cultures he encountered on his travels. After 1946, he focused on the study of Yoruba culture and began recording his observations in writing, consolidating his transition from photographer to writer and ethnologist.
In 1966, he earned a doctorate (doctorat de troisième cycle) from the Sorbonne, in Paris, with a thesis on the slave trade between the Bight of Benin and Bahia from the 17th to the 19th century. In 1974, he joined the faculty of the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) and helped create the Museu Afro-Brasileiro, inaugurated in 1982.
Since 1989, the Fundação Pierre Verger has preserved his 62,000 negatives, his extensive library and his personal archive, and is dedicated to disseminating his anthropological and photographic legacy.
Critical Commentary
Pierre Verger was born in Paris in 1902. He came from a wealthy family, the son of the owner of a prosperous printing company. With no interest in business or the bourgeois way of life, Verger became a rebellious young man. He did not conform to social conventions or meet the expectations of his social class. He left the lycée at 17 and systematically turned down the professional opportunities offered by his family. In 1932, he bought his first camera. He learned the technical basics of photography from his friend, the photographer Pierre Boucher (1908 - 2000). His first images were strongly influenced by Surrealism. The artist looked for unusual figurations in ordinary objects. After his mother's death, he saw no reason to stay in Paris. He decided to travel the world and get to know places far removed from his cultural reality. He wanted "to escape his milieu and his anti-milieu".1 That same year he went to the Soviet Union, where he recorded the 15th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
In 1932 and 1933, his interest in completely different ways of life took him to Tahiti. Influenced by the idyllic vision of the painter Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903) and the anthropological gaze of the filmmaker Robert Flaherty (1884 - 1951), he captured in his images the "happy nature of the Polynesians".2 He traveled the islands for more than a year, photographing everything with technical precision. In his images, he reconstructed a world completely different from his own. He used pronounced contrasts of light and dark to recreate the customs, traditions and environment of the islands, respecting their uniqueness and beauty. He returned to Paris in 1934, where he stayed only briefly, but to good effect. Researchers at the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro (later the Musée de l'Homme) highlighted the documentary value of his photos and his skill in portraying cultural diversity.
At that time, Verger became a professional photographer. He joined photo agencies and traveled the world taking pictures, living a nomadic life. He worked with prestigious agencies such as Alliance Photo - founded by him and Pierre Boucher -, A.D.E.P. and Magnum. These agencies played a key role in shaping a new way of seeing photography.3 They included photographers of the stature of Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 - 2004), Hans Namuth (1915 - 1990) and Robert Capa (1913 - 1954), artists who created a new way of portraying people in their context, a defining trait of Pierre Verger's work. He traveled for about 12 years, always passing through Paris and staying only briefly - seeing friends, renewing professional contacts and setting off again. During this period, he visited the United States, Japan, Indochina and West Africa, among other places. In 1934, he covered the round-the-world trip of the journalists Marc Chadourne and Jules Sauerwein. In 1937, he was a war correspondent for Life magazine in China. Four years later, he went to South America. He visited Argentina and Peru, where he settled and worked at the Museo Nacional de Lima.
After reading the novel Jubiabá, by Jorge Amado (1912 - 2001), he decided to visit Bahia. He arrived in Salvador in 1946. That same year, he began working for the magazine O Cruzeiro. The Frenchman felt an immediate empathy with the people of the city. He was enchanted by Black culture, which predominated in its streets and homes. He photographed everything, without documentary intent, portraying the beauty of the men and women who recreated the African continent in the city. He drew close to them and sought to understand their histories and traditions. This interest led him to Candomblé - at first as an observer, but gradually he became involved in its religious practices and converted. From then on, his relationship with photography changed. His travels left behind their vague direction and followed a clear route, seeking the forms that the African cult of the ancestors and Black culture had taken on both sides of the Atlantic.
In Brazil, in 1948, he got to know and documented the vodun religion of São Luís, Maranhão, and the Xangô of Pernambuco. That same year, after being initiated into Candomblé in Salvador, he left for Dahomey, in West Africa. There he found the rite of the orixás in its original form. In his images he sought to reveal the differences and similarities between the rituals of Brazil and that country, establishing in his work a dialogue between cultures separated by the Black diaspora. Before returning to Brazil, he encountered mystical practices in Paramaribo, Suriname (1948), and in Haiti (1949).
The institution funding the research, the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire - IFAN, required a written report in addition to the photographs. From then on, the photographer began to combine image and text. His photographs took on scientific interest and came to be used in written anthropological reflection. The first results of his research were published in 1951 in the book Brésil,4 with a preface by Alceu Amoroso Lima. That same year, Verger worked as a photographer on the Unesco study of racial prejudice in Brazil. At the same time, his status in Candomblé changed. In 1951, he became an ogã at the Opô Afonjá terreiro. Two years later, back in Dahomey, he became a babalaô (master of divination). There he received the name Fatumbi, which he adopted for the rest of his life. According to the researcher Ângela Lühning, "this fact intensified his contact with, and his interest in, African culture".5
In 1954, Verger published his first major work on Yoruba culture, Dieux d'Afrique,6 in which he used photographs of the gods incorporated in their devotees and a written description of each orixá, its ritual and its attributes. He increasingly devoted himself to his intellectual concerns, studying the religious diversity of the peoples who left Africa, the slave trade and the traditional botany of Black populations. These works restored the dialogue between social groups separated by slavery. In 1957 he went to Senegal and Cuba. Through images and texts, he compared the deities of those countries with those of Brazil. In 1966, he earned his doctorate from the Sorbonne, in Paris. His thesis dealt with the slave trade from the Bight of Benin to Bahia.7 Photography gradually became secondary in his work. Verger published dozens of books and articles on the movement of Black culture across the Atlantic. Around 1973, he gave up photography, ending 50 years of activity. That year, he became a professor at the Universidade Federal da Bahia - UFBA, where he worked to set up the Afro-Brazilian museum. In 1977, he went to Nigeria, where he worked as a visiting professor at the University of Ifé. From the 1980s onward, his work gained greater public exposure. The publisher Corrupio, in Salvador, began translating and publishing his books, and exhibitions of his images were organized. In 1981, he exhibited with Mario Cravo Neto (1947 - 2009) at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand - Masp and at the Museu de Arte da Bahia. In 1989, the Fundação Pierre Verger was created to look after his collection and preserve his legacy. On his 90th birthday, in 1992, he was honored with the exhibition Brasil África Brasil, at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo - Pesp. Three years later, he published his last book, Ewé: o Uso das Plantas na Sociedade Iorubá [Ewé: The Use of Plants in Yoruba Society],8 with a preface by Jorge Amado. Verger died on February 11, 1996, in Salvador. In 2002, he was honored with the retrospective O Olhar Viajante de Pierre Verger [The Traveling Gaze of Pierre Verger], first at the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia - MAM/BA, in Salvador, and then at the Centro Cultural da Fiesp, in São Paulo.
Notes
1 VERGER, Pierre. 50 anos de fotografia. Salvador: Corrupio, 1982, p. 14.
2 Idem, ibidem, p. 21.
3 Cf. Iara Cecília Pimentel Rolim. In: ROLIM, Iara Cecília Pimentel. O olho do rei: imagens de Pierre Verger. Master's dissertation in anthropology. 2002. Departamento de Antropologia do Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Unicamp, IFCH - Unicamp, Campinas, 2002. p.75.
4 Pierre Verger, A. Bom, M. Gautherot. Brésil. Paris, Paul Hartmann, 1951.
5 LÜHNING, Angela. Pierre Fatumbi Verger e sua obra. In: Afro-Ásia. Salvador: Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais - FFCH/UFBA, n. 21-22, 1998-1999.
6 VERGER, Pierre. Dieux d'Afrique. Paris: Paul Hartmann, 1954.
7 VERGER, Pierre. Flux et reflux de la traite des esclaves entre le Golfe du Bénin et Bahia de Todos os Santos, du dix-septième au dix-neuvième siècle. The work was published in Paris in 1968 by Mouton. In Brazil, it only came out in 1985, through the publisher Corrupio, in Salvador.
8 VERGER, Pierre. Ewé: o uso das plantas na sociedade iorubá. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995.
Critiques
"In Verger, photography is transparency, information, document, projection and multiplication of the beauty of the culture of a race which, though institutionally recognized as one of those that formed the nation, often has its values disparaged, when not ignored.
But Pierre Verger's photographic documentation in Deuses Africanos [African Gods] is not only this cold, informative account of a thematic universe that interested him. It is also an act of love, a reflection of his affection for the customs he so fully embraced, with freedom and humor and without any academicism, ever since he arrived in Brazil.
Initiated as a babalaô in 1951, he spent 17 years in Africa and had access to all the oral traditions, which allowed him to detect influences, discover origins and become an unsurpassed narrator of the histories of Black Africans and of their cultural heritage spread around the world. The camera, his inseparable companion, allowed him to record the outward signs of his discoveries. But not only that. Because he settled in Bahia, it also allowed him to become one of the most serious and influential cataloguers of the Black visual influence in Brazil".
Moracy R. de Oliveira
OLIVEIRA, Moracy R. de. A cultura negra em fotos: um legítimo ato de amor. Jornal da Tarde, São Paulo, 22 abr. 1981.
"Increasingly drawn by the fascination of Bahia's mysticism and playfulness, he focused more and more on the secular and religious manifestations of Black people. He photographed intensely, without any planned intention of making a vast documentary record, above all in the field of religious ethnography. He was guided by a purely aesthetic and experiential instinct; even so, he ended up producing an extremely rich and important record of the memory of the people of Bahia. As his photos show, he was present at samba and capoeira circles. At Carnival, he recorded the blocos, cordões, batucadas and afoxés, groups of Afro-Bahian character. The popular festivals earned his special affection, especially the washing of Bonfim, before it became carnival and a political and tourist tool. The Gift for Yemanjá, the Afro-Catholic feasts of Santa Bárbara, São Lázaro, São Cosme and São Damião, preceded by the traditional Missa Pedida, a kind of penance undertaken by the petitioner, carrying a small decorated basket with the Saint inside, dressed for the occasion, and saying to whomever they met - Missa pedida Santa Bárbara; in the case of the hugely popular twin saints, popular irreverence made fun of it:
Missa pedida
São Cosme São Damião
Um é corno, outro é ladrão [One's a cuckold, the other a thief]
The photographer was not content with the mere aesthetic record that the click of the Rolleiflex gave him at that instant. As he mingled with the Afro-Bahian religious community and came to live with and share its secret, he felt the urge to gather in manuscripts everything he saw, heard or was told, but always accompanied by the working tool of the photographer and researcher, which in this case was an Uher tape recorder. A difficult task, since at the time sound and photographic reproduction, whether moving or still, was forbidden as a matter of religious precept. It is not true that the religious tradition among the Black people of Africa and the diaspora was passed on only orally. There were the famous notebooks, which survive to this day, in which those who could read and write made their own records; otherwise, they dictated them to other people they trusted completely, for when memory failed or went blank, in today's language. Verger made great use of these notebooks, in Bahia, in Cuba and in Africa in general, access to which was gained through an exchange of interests, often a pecuniary one".
Waldeloir Rego
REGO, Waldeloir. O fotógrafo e a etnografia. In: VERGER, Pierre. Bahia África Bahia: fotografia. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 1996. p. 17-18.
"It is important to stress that practically all of Verger's written work (excluding his albums and photographic books) concerns the context of Yoruba culture, both in Nigeria and Benin and in the diaspora in the Americas, coinciding with the aforementioned phase from 1946 onward, when he began to define his interest in the subject. One of the reasons he worked with such dedication, even obsession, on Yoruba culture is mentioned by Ulli Beier, one of his friends from the time Verger spent in Africa: 'to gather, observe, write in order to give shape to this vast body of knowledge, so that literate cultures would give it more importance. Like the other religions that have their sacred book in order to be respected'. It was this desire to document the richness of Yoruba culture, so that it would gain the recognition it deserved, that led Verger to stress its religious structure, different from the great 'revealed' religions, as he used to call religions transmitted through writing. A religion that could at the very least prompt reflection, from a less prejudiced perspective, fostering a human rapprochement between different cultures and religions. In short, we can observe in him two attitudes and stances that often mingle and merge. He was the meticulous and patient researcher, always focused on the human being, and at the same time the messenger who took it upon himself to keep alive the contact between the two sides of the Atlantic".
Angela Lühning
LÜHNING, Ângela. Fatumbi Verger e sua obra. Homenagem. In: Afro-Ásia. Salvador: Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais - FFCH/UFBA, nº 21-22, 1998-1999, pp. 315-353.
"If I find any reason for vanity in my books, it comes from a proven and publicly known fact: the reading of these novels, in Brazil and abroad, has brought a great many people to Bahia - led by the hand of the Black man Balduíno, the girl Gabriela, the mulatto Pedro Arcanjo, Quincas Berro Dágua, conqueror of death. Among these many visitors, several stayed here forever, won over by the Bahian way of life, by our mestizo civilization. Some, intellectual figures of the first rank, became important parts of our culture, became incorporated into it and made an invaluable contribution to it.
Two of them became essential Bahians for what they represent in our life and our creation. I speak of the artist Carybé and of the former photojournalist and learned ethnologist Pierre Verger. Both - the artist with the pencil, the brush, the gouge; the scientist with the camera, research, deep knowledge and profound erudition - are today the main guardians of the memory of the people of Bahia: in the extraordinary art of the former, in the scientific work of the latter. There you have two obás of Bahia.
Carybé and Verger have kept the memory of Bahia present and eternal, despite the crowds, the degradation, the persistent and criminal destruction of every kind of value of our beloved city: from architecture to customs, from climate to dress, from landscape to festivals and devotions".
Jorge Amado
VERGER, Pierre. Retratos da Bahia: 1946-1952. 3. ed. Salvador: Corrupio, 2002.
"Verger's photographic work, serious and consistent, grounded in the purest intuition, captures the free gesture of the citizen in daily life, the religious festivals, the dynamics of the city, carnival as the great festival of the people, religiosity and Black culture. With his distinctive light and classical framing, he left a precious iconography of this culture. His instinct, purely aesthetic and documentary, humanist and social, produced more than 65,000 negatives, now held at the Fundação Pierre Verger, (...) Mario Cravo Neto considers Verger's photographic quality comparable only to that of Cartier-Bresson,(...)".
Rubens Fernandes Junior
FERNANDES JUNIOR, Rubens. Panorama da Fotografia no Brasil [1946-98]. In: ______. Labirinto e identidades: panorama da fotografia no Brasil [1946-1998]. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2003. p. 150-151.
Collections
Coleção Pirelli/Masp de Fotografias - São Paulo SP
Fundação Pierre Verger - Salvador BA
Solo Exhibitions
1992 - São Paulo SP - Brasil África Brasil [Brazil Africa Brazil], Pierre Verger 90 Years, at Pinacoteca do Estado
Group Exhibitions
1934 - Paris (France) - Group show, at Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro
1979 - Salvador BA - Exhibition with Mário Cravo Neto, at Museu de Arte da Bahia
1980 - São Paulo SP - Exhibition with Mário Cravo Neto, at Masp
1981 - São Paulo SP - The African Gods, at Galeria Fotoptica
1992 - Salvador BA - Musical Instruments, at MAM/BA
1992 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at Masp
1992 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Brasilien: Entdeckung und Selbstentdeckung, at Kunsthaus Zürich
1993 - Lausanne (Switzerland) - Group show, at Musée de l'Elysée
1993 - Paris (France) - Group show, at Musée National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie
1993 - Beijing (China) - Group show, at Imperial Palace Exhibition Hall
1993 - São Paulo SP - 3rd Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at Masp
1994 - London (United Kingdom) - A Hidden View: Images of Bahia, Brazil, at Concourse Gallery
1995 - Belo Horizonte MG - Heirs of the Night: Fragments of the Black Imaginary, at Centro de Cultura de Belo Horizonte
1996 - Bogotá (Colombia) - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at Casa do Brasil
1996 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
1996 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Imber
Posthumous Exhibitions
1996 - São Paulo SP - Bahia África Bahia Exhibition, Pierre Verger and Marcel Gautherot, at Pinacoteca do Estado
1999 - São Paulo SP - Solo, at Masp
1999 - Wolfsburg (Germany) - Brasilianische Fotografie 1946 bis 1998, at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
2000 - Valencia (Spain) - De la Antropofagia a Brasília: Brasil 1920-1950, at IVAM. Centre Julio González
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brasil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at Fundação Bienal
2002 - Salvador BA - The Traveling Gaze of Pierre Verger, at MAM/BA
2002 - São Paulo SP - From Anthropophagy to Brasília: Brazil 1920-1950, at MAB/Faap
2002 - São Paulo SP - Flux and Reflux, at Fnac
2002 - São Paulo SP - The Traveling Gaze of Pierre Verger, at Centro Cultural Fiesp
2002 - São Paulo SP - Visions and Illuminations: Brazilian Contemporary Photography from the Joaquim Paiva Collection, at Oca
2003 - São Paulo SP - Black Memories, Memories of Black People: The Luso-Afro-Brazilian Imaginary and the Legacy of Slavery, at Galeria de Arte do Sesi
2003 - São Paulo SP - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Weave of Brazilian Art, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2004 - São Paulo SP - 90 Years of Tomie Ohtake, at MNBA
2004 - Berlin (Germany) - Black Gods in the Americas, at Museu de Etnologia de Berlim
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Weave of Brazilian Art, at Museu Nacional de Belas Artes - MNBA
2004 - São Paulo SP - Pierre Verger: 66 Images, at Galeria Luisa Strina
2005 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Pierre Verger: Portrait of South America, at Museo de Arte Hispanoamericano Isaac Fernández Blanco
2005 - Salvador BA - Music & Trance: Tribute to Pierre Verger and Jean Rouch, at Teatro IRDEB
2005 - Santiago (Chile) - Pierre Verger: Mirror of Cultures, at Centro Cultural las Condes
2006 - São Paulo SP - Pierre Verger's Brazil, at MAM/SP
2006 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Pierre Verger's Brazil, at MAM/RJ
2006 - Belém PA - Salão Arte Pará
2006 - Salvador BA - África Bahia, at Galeria Pierre Verger
2007 - São Paulo SP - Art-Anthropology, at MAC/USP
2008 - Brasília DF - Flux and Reflux, at the Chapelaria of the Senado Federal
2008 - São Paulo SP - Ties of the Gaze, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2008 - São Paulo SP - Pierre Verger's Japan - 1930s, at Conjunto Cultural da Caixa
2008 - Salvador BA - Pierre Verger and the Sea, at Fundação Pierre Verger
Source: Itaú Cultural
