Pierre Verger (Paris, France 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 acquired his first Rolleiflex. Throughout his career, he traveled through several countries and collaborated with European and American newspapers and magazines, such as Paris-Soir, in 1934; Daily Mirror, from 1935 to 1936; Life, in 1937; Match, in 1938; Argentina Libre and the Argentine world, in 1941 and 1942; and Cruzeiro, from 1945 to the end of the 1950s.
In 1934, founded the Alliance Photo agency with other photographers, responsible for managing and disseminating the material produced by its members. He moved to Salvador in 1946 and began to dedicate himself to the study of black religions and cultures in Africa and Brazil, an area in which he became one of the most respected specialists, publishing several books on the subject. He was initiated at the Divination Service in Benin, receiving the title of Fatumbi (reborn in the grace of Ifá).
The first phase of his work is marked by the publication of photographic books, starting in 1931, in which he recorded the cultures that met during his travels. After 1946, he focused on the study of Yoruba culture and began to record his observations in writing, consolidating his transition from photographer to writer and ethnologist. Sorbonne, in Paris, with a thesis on the slave trade between the Gulf of Benin and Bahia, between the 17th and 19th centuries. In 1974, he joined the faculty of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) and collaborated in the creation of the Afro-Brazilian Museum, inaugurated in 1982.
Since 1989, the Pierre Verger Foundation has preserved its 62,000 negatives, his extensive library, his personal archive and is dedicated to the dissemination of his anthropological and photographic legacy.
Critical commentary
Pierre Verger was born in 1902 in Paris. He is a member of a wealthy family, the son of the owner of a thriving typographic company. With no interest in business and bourgeois way of life, Verger becomes a rebellious young man. It does not conform to social conventions or fulfill the expectations of their social class. He leaves high school at the age of 17 and systematically rejects the professional opportunities offered by his family. In 1932, he acquired his first camera. Learn the technical rudiments of photography with friend and photographer Pierre Boucher (1908 - 2000). His first images are strongly influenced by surrealism. The artist seeks unusual figurations in common objects. With the death of his mother, he sees no more reason to remain in Paris. He decides to travel the world, to know places far from his cultural reality. wants to "escape from its environment and its anti-meio".1 In the same year it goes to the Soviet Union, where it records the 15th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
Between 1932 and 1933, the interest in completely different ways of life is the Take it to Tahiti. Influenced by the idyllic view of the painter Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903) and the anthropological look of filmmaker Robert Flaherty (1884 - 1951), he captures in his images the "happy nature of the Polynesians". the islands for over a year. Photographs everything with technical acuity. In his images, he reconstitutes a completely different world from his own. It uses the pronounced contrasts of light and dark to recreate the habits, traditions and environment of the islands, respecting their uniqueness and beauty. He returns to Paris in 1934, where he remains for a short time, but on a fruitful stay. The researchers of the Musée Etnographic du Trocadéro (future Musée de l'Homme) highlight the documentary value of their photos and their expertise in portraying cultural diversity.
At the time, Verger professionalizes himself as a photographer. He joins photography agencies and goes around the world to record images. Live in a nomadic way. He collaborates with prestigious agencies, such as Alianance Photo - founded by him and Pierre Boucher -, A.D.E.P and Magnum. These agencies play a key role in creating a new look at photography.3 In them work photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 - 2004), Hans Namuth (1915 - 1990) and Robert Capa act. (1913 - 1954), artists who create a new way of portraying man in his context, a striking feature for Pierre Verger's work. travels for approximately 12 years. He always passes through Paris and stays there for a short time. Reviews friends, strengthens professional contacts and leaves again. During this period, he met the United States, Japan, Indochina, West Africa, among other places. In 1934, it covers the travel around the world of journalists Marc Chadourne and Jules Sauerwein. In 1937, he is a war correspondent for Life magazine in China. Four years later, he goes to South America. He visits Argentina and Peru, where he establishes his residence and works at the National Museum of Lima.
After reading the novel Jubiabá, by Jorge Amado (1912 - 2001), he decided to visit Bahia. He arrives in Salvador in 1946. In the same year, he began a collaboration in the magazine O Cruzeiro. The Frenchman feels immediate empathy for the people of the city. He is enchanted by the black culture, which predominates in the streets and houses of the place. Photographs everything without documentary interest. It portrays the beauty of the men and women who recreate the African continent in the city. He approaches them and seeks to understand their stories and traditions. Interest leads him to Candomblé. At first as an observer, but progressively, he gets involved with religious practices and converts. From there, its relationship with photography changes. The trips abandon the imprecise orientation and follow a clear itinerary. They seek the forms that the African cult of ancestors and black culture took on both sides of the Atlantic.
In Brazil, he knows and documents, in 1948, the religion of the Voduns, from São Luís, Maranhão, and Xangô Pernambuco. In the same year, after being started in Candomblé in Salvador, he left for Dahomey, in West Africa. There he finds the Rite of the Orixás in its original formulation. In his images he seeks to reveal the differences and similarities in the rituals of Brazil and the other country. establishes in the work a dialogue between cultures separated by the black diaspora. Before returning to Brazil, he met mystical manifestations in Paramaribo, Suriname (1948), and in Haiti (1949).
The center that finances the research, the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire - IFAN, It requires, in addition to the photographs, a written report. From there, the photographer begins the association between image and text. His photographs gain scientific interest and are used in written anthropological reflection. The first results of his investigations were published in 1951, in the book Brésil,4 with a preface by Alceu Amoroso Lima. In the same year, Verger works as a photographer in UNESCO's research on racial prejudice in Brazil. At the same time, he changes his status in Candomblé. In 1951, he began to perform the function of Ogã in the terreiro Opô Afonjá. Two years later, back to Dahomey, he becomes a bababala (lord of divination). There he gets the name of Fatumbi, who adopts for the rest of his life. According to researcher Ângela Luhning, "this fact intensifies its contact with, and its interest in African culture". 5
In 1954, Verger publishes his first breathal work on Yoruba culture, Dieux d'Afrique,6 in which he uses the photographs of the incorporated gods and a written description of each orixá, his ritual and his assignments. it increasingly deals with its intellectual concerns. It studies the religious diversity of peoples from Africa, the slave trade and the traditional botany of black populations. The works resume the dialogue between social groups distanced by slavery. In 1957 he went to Senegal and Cuba. Through images and texts, it compares the deities of these countries with those of Brazil. In 1966, he obtained the title of Doctor by the Sorbonne in Paris. His thesis deals with the slave trade of the Gulf of Benin for Bahia.7 Gradually, photography becomes secondary in his work. Verger publishes dozens of books and articles on the transit of black culture in the Atlantic. Around 1973, he gave up photographing, ending 50 years of activity. That year, he became a professor at the Federal University of Bahia - UFBA, where he works to implement the Afro-Brazilian Museum. In 1977, he left for Nigeria, where he works as a visiting professor at the University of Ifé. From the 1980s onwards, his work gained better public exposure. Editora Corrupio, from Salvador, begins the translation and publication of its books. At the same time, exhibitions of their images are organized. In 1981, he exhibited with Mario Cravo Neto (1947) at the São Paulo Museum of Art of São Paulo Chateaubriand - MASP and at the Bahia Art Museum. In 1989, the Pierre Verger Foundation was created, which takes care of its collection and preserves its legacy. On his 90th birthday, in 1992, he is honored with the Mostra Brasil África Brasil, at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo - PESP. Three years later, he publishes his last book, Ewé: The Use of Plants in Yoruba Society,8 with a preface by Jorge Amado. Verger dies on February 11, 1996, in Salvador. In 2002, Pierre Verger's Olhar Viajante de Pierre Verger is honored with the retrospective exhibition, first at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia - MAM/BA, in Salvador, then at the Fiesp Cultural Center, in São Paulo.
Notes
1 VERGER, Pierre 50 years of photography. Salvador: Corrupio, 1982, p. 14.
2 Idem, ibidem, p. 21.
3 Cf. Iara Cecília Pimentel Rolim. In: ROLIM, Iara Cecília Pimentel. The Eye of the King: Images by Pierre Verger. Dissertation (Master in Anthropology). 2002. Department Anthropology of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at UNICAMP, IFCH - UNICAMP, Campinas, 2002. p.75.
4 PIERRE VERGER, A. BOM, M. Gautherot. brasil. Paris, Paul Hartmann, 1951.
5 LÜHNNING, Angela. Pierre Fatumbi Verger and his work. In: Afro-Asia. Salvador: Center for Afro-Oriental Studies - 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 traute des cclaves between Le golf du bénin et bahia de Todos os Santos, du dix-septieme au dix-neuvieme siècle. The work was published in Paris in 1968, by the publisher Mouton. In Brazil, it only came out in 1985, by Editora Corrupio, from Salvador.
8 VERGER, Pierre. Ewé: The use of plants in Yoruba society. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995.
Criticism
"In Verger the photograph is transparency, it is information, document, projection and multiplication of the beauty of the culture of a race that, even institutionally recognized as one of those They constituted the nationality, often has their values despised, when not unknown.
But the photographic documentation of Pierre Verger present in African gods is not only this cold and informative relationship about a thematic universe of interest. love, a reflection of the affection for the customs that he knew so well, with freedom and humor and without any academicism, since he arrived in Brazil.
Balaô started in 1951, spent 17 years in Africa and had access to all oral traditions, which It allowed him to detect influences, discover origins and become an unsurpassed narrator of the stories of black Africans and his cultural heritage spread around the world, the camera, inseparable companion, allowed him to record the external signs of his discoveries. But not only that. He allowed himself to be based in Bahia, that he also became one of the most serious and influential inventors of the black visual influence in Brazil".
Moracy R. de Oliveira
OLIVEIRA, Moracy R. De. Black culture in Photos: A legitimate act of love. Jornal da Tarde, São Paulo, 22 Apr. 1981.
"Attracted more and more by the fascination of mysticism and the playful of Bahia, it was fixed more and more in the profane and religious manifestations of the black. He photographed intensely, without that programmed concern of making a vast documentary, especially in the field of religious ethnography. It was guided by a purely aesthetic and experiential instinct, however it ended up making a very rich and important documentary of the memory of the people of Bahia. As his photos speak, his presence was made in the samba and capoeira circles. At Carnival, he recorded the presence of blocks, cordões, drumming and afoxés, entities of an Afro-Bahian nature. The popular festivals deserved a special affection, especially the laundering of Bonfim, before becoming a carnival and a political and tourist instrument. Gift for Yemanjá, the Afro-Catholic festivals of Santa Bárbara, São Lázaro, São Cosme and São Damião, preceded by the traditional requested Mass, a kind of penance to which he submits to a beggar, bearing a Balainho decorated with the saint inside, and dressed in character, saying to whom he found - Mass requested Santa Bárbara, and that, in the case of the very popular twin saints, the popular irreverence satirized:
Mass requested
São Cosme São Damião
One is a cuckold, another is a thief
The photographer was not satisfied with the aesthetic record that the Rolleiflex click gave him at that moment. As he mingled with the Afro-Bahian religious community and began to live and live with his secret, he came to gather in manuscripts everything he saw, who spoke or told him, but always accompanied by the work instrument of the photographer and the researcher, who, in this case, was a WHER RECORDER. A difficult task, because at the time sound and photographic reproduction, whether dynamic or static, was prohibited, as a matter of religious precept. It is not true that the religious tradition among the blacks of Africa and the diaspora was only orally passed. There were the famous notebooks, resistant to this day, where people who knew how to read and write made their records in person, otherwise, they dictated so that other people, of their extreme confidence, would make the aforementioned records, for when the memory failed or a blank, in today's language. Verger made a lot of use of these notebooks, in Bahia, Cuba and Africa in general, whose access took place through a game of interest, often pecuniary".
Waldeloir Rego
REGO, Waldeloir. The Photographer and ethnography. In: VERGER, Pierre. Bahia África Bahia: Photography. São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado, 1996. p. 17-18.
"It is important to emphasize that practically all of Verger's written work (excluding publications from albums and photographic books) refers to the context of Yoruba culture, both in Nigeria and Benin, and in the diaspora in the Americas, coinciding with the aforementioned phase from 1946, when he start to define your interest in the subject. One of the reasons for working with such dedication and even obsession with Yoruba culture is mentioned by Ulli Beier, one of the friends of the time that Verger spent in Africa: 'to put together, observe, write to give a body to this vast knowledge, for literate cultures to give more importance. like the other religions that have their holy book to be respected'. It was this desire to document the wealth of Yoruba culture, so that it would gain the recognition deserved, which made Verger emphasize his religious structure different from the great 'revealed' religions, as he used to call the religions transmitted by writing. A religion that could at least enable a reflection, within a less prejudiced view, facilitating a human approximation of different cultures and religions. In short, we can observe in him two attitudes and postures that often mix and confuse. He was the meticulous and patient researcher, always focused on the human being, and at the same time the messenger who was especially responsible for keeping the contact between the two sides of the Atlantic alive".
Angela Lühning
Lühning, Ângela. Fatumbi Verger and his work. Homage. pp. 315-353.
"If any reason for vanity I find in my books, it stems from a proven fact and public knowledge: the reading of these novels, in Brazil and abroad, brought a large number of people to Bahia - coming from the hand of the Negro Balduíno, of the girl Gabriela, by the mulatto Pedro Arcanjo, by Quincas Berro Dagua, winner of death. Among these many visitors, several here stayed forever, won by the Bahian life, by our mestizo civilization. Some, intellectual figures of the first order, became important pieces of our culture, they were incorporated to it, giving it invaluable contribution.
Two among them became fundamental Bahians for what they represent in our life and in our creation. I speak of the artist Carybé and the former photographic reporter and wise ethnologist Pierre Verger. Both, the artist with the pencil, the brush, the gouge, the scientist with the camera, research, deep knowledge and deep erudition, are today the main preservers of the memory of the people of Bahia - in the extraordinary art of the first, in the work of scientist of the second. Here are two Obás from Bahia.
Carybé and Verger kept the memory of Bahia present and eternal, despite the crowd, the degradation, the persistent and criminal liquidation of the values of all kinds of our beloved city: from architecture to customs, from climate to attire, from landscape to feasts and devotions".
Jorge Amado
VERGER, Pierre. Portraits of Bahia: 1946-1952. 3. Ed. Salvador: Corrupio, 2002.
"Verger's photographic work, serious and consistent, supported by the most "pure intuition, captures the free gesture of the citizen in his daily life, the religious festivals, the dynamics of the city, the carnival as the great feast of the people, religiosity and black culture. With its own light and classic framing, he left a precious iconography about this culture. His instinct, purely aesthetic and documentary, humanist and social, produced more than 65,000 negatives, currently deposited at the Pierre Verger Foundation, (...) Mario Cravo Neto considers the photographic quality of Verger comparable only to that of Cartier-Bresson,(...)".
Rubens Fernandes Junior
FERNANDES JUNIOR, Rubens. Panorama of Photography in Brazil [1946-98]. In: ______. Labyrinth and Identities: Panorama of Photography in Brazil [1946-1998] São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2003. p. 150-151.
Collectives
Pirelli Collection/Masp of Photographs - São Paulo SP
Pierre Verger Foundation - Salvador BA
Individual exhibitions
1992 - São Paulo SP - Brazil Africa Brazil, Pierre Verger 90 years at the Pinacoteca do Estado
Collective exhibitions
1934 - Paris (France) - Salvador BA - Exhibition with Mário Cravo Neto, at the Bahia Art Museum
1980 - São Paulo SP - Exhibition with Mário Cravo Neto, at Masp
1981 - São Paulo SP - The African Gods, at the Fotoptica Gallery
1992 - Salvador BA - Musical Instruments, at MAM/BA
1992 - São Paulo SP - 2nd Pirelli Collection/Masp of Photographs, at MASP
1992 - Zurich (Switzerland) - Brasilien: Entdeckung und Selbstentdeckung, at the Kunsthaus Zürich
1993 - Lausanne (Switzerland) - Collective, at the Musée de Elisée
1993 - Paris (France) - Collective, at the Musée National des Arts Africaine and Océanien
1993 - Beijing (China) - Collective, at the Imperial Palace Exhibition Hall
1993 - São Paulo SP - 3rd Pirelli/Masp Photo Collection, at MASP
1994 - London (United Kingdom) - A Hidden View: images of Bahia, Brazil, at Concourse Gallery
1995 - Belo Horizonte MG - The Heirs of the Night: Fragments of the Black Imaginary, at the Belo Horizonte Culture Center
1996 - Bogotá (Colombia) - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photo Collection, at Casa do Brasil
1996 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Imagenes de Brasil. Pirelli/Masp Photography Collection, at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
1996 - Caracas (Venezuela) - Images from Brazil. Pirelli/Masp Photo Collection, at the Contemporary Art Museo of Caracas Sofía Imber
Postombious exhibitions
1996 - São Paulo SP - Bahia África Bahia, Pierre Verger and Marcel exhibition Gautherot, at the Pinacoteca do Estado
1999 - São Paulo SP - Individual, at MASP
1999 - Wolfsburg (Germany) - Brasilianische 1946 bis 1998, No Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
2000 - Valencia (Spain) - From La Anthropophagia to Brasilía: Brazil 1920-1950, at Ivam. Center Julio Gonzáles
2000 - São Paulo SP - Brazil + 500 Rediscovery Exhibition, at Fundação Bienal
2002 - Salvador BA - The Viajante de Pierre Verger, at MAM/BA
2002 - São Paulo SP - From Anthropophagia to Brasília: Brazil 1920-1950, at MAB/FAAP
2002 - São Paulo SP - Flow and reflux, at FNAC
2002 - São Paulo SP - The Via Violante de Pierre Verger, at the Fiesp Cultural Center
2002 - São Paulo SP - Visions and Alumbramentos: Brazilian contemporary photography from the Joaquim Paiva collection, at OCA
2003 - São Paulo SP - Negras Memórias, Memories of Blacks: The Portuguese-Afro-Brazilian Imaginary and the Heritage of Slavery, at the Sesi Art Gallery
2003 - São Paulo SP - Tomie Ohtake in the Spiritual Plot of Brazilian Art, at the Tomie Institute Ohtake
2004 - São Paulo SP - 90 years of Tomie Ohtake, at MNBA
2004 - Berlin (Germany) - Black Gods in the Americas, at the Museum of Ethnology of Berlin
2004 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - Tomie Ohtake in the spiritual plot of Brazilian art, at the National Museum of Fine Arts - MNBA
2004 - São Paulo SP - Pierre Verger: 66 images, at Galeria Luisa Strina
2005 - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - Pierre Verger: Portrait of South America, at the Hispoamerican Museum Fernándes Blanco
2005 - Salvador (Bahia) - music & Trance: Homage to Pierre Verger and Jean Rouch, at the Irdeb Theater
2005 - Santiago de Chile (Chile) - Pierre Verger: Espelho das Culturas, at the Las Condes Cultural Center
2006 - São Paulo SP - O Brasil by Pierre Verger, MAM/SP 
2006 - Rio de Janeiro RJ - The Brazil of Pierre Verger, at MAM/RJ
2006 - Belém PA - Salão Arte Pará
2006 - Salvador BA - Africa Bahia, at the Pierre Verger Gallery
2007 - São Paulo SP - Arte-Anthropology, at MAC/USP 
2008 - Brasília DF - Flow and reflux, at the Senate's headdress Fereral
2008 - São Paulo SP - Laços do Olhar, at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake
2008 - São Paulo SP - Japan by Pierre Verger - 30s, at the Cultural Set
2008 - Salvador BA - Pierre Verger and the Sea, at Pierre Verger Foundation
Source: Itaú Cultural
