By Marilene Ribeiro
During my digital residency at Photoworks, I was given the opportunity to write about a book I have launched recently, Photo-Rituals for Disappearance, which has just been published by eKphrasis, Mexico. It has been a long journey, full of emotions and learning, from when this project started, back in 2020, until it eventually took its final book form.
In 2019, I felt two hearts beating inside me. Both beautiful and loved. A choice was demanded of me, one which I felt so difficult to make that I kept postponing it. I kept hoping that, in midst of all the overwhelming feelings, a moment of sudden clarity would show me which heart to keep, and which to cut off. But that magic insight never came, and the situation became unbearable. For reasons too complicated to be put into words, in January 2020 I made one of the hardest decisions of my life: to split with one of those two men I loved. From then onwards, I would need to find ways of vanishing from his life and erasing our 15 years of love, commitment and care. That prompted me to perform a cathartic play with ordinary elements that had populated our story, which I documented by means of experimental analogue photography, for which I used expired film I had kept for 15 years, chemical-based image making, and digital photography. What started as an exploration with materials and imagery to give shape to that painful process of killing and mourning, ended up taking the form of womanly rituals, as my sister, my female friends and colleagues – who collaborated in the making – and I would gather and engage in the shots of those ‘performances’ in an atmosphere of shamanic rites.
The uncanny situations that were revealed in these visual essays both evoke and affirm a mystical aura that has surrounded women throughout history. An aura to be celebrated with pride, rather than hidden with shame. An aura that connects us with healing powers, with powers that offer a dialogue between love and death. Powers which are naturally inherent to the female being, but which were labelled as ‘witchcraft’ and, consequently, repressed by a patriarchal society.
So, I decided that I wanted to use that material we created to communicate another story about us –women: a story in which I could honour the magic and the healing powers we all have inside us. I wanted to produce something that could celebrate this inner, inherent power as a response to the violent oppression and persecution that we, women, have been subjected to, from immemorial times to the present date.
That led me to delve into a multidisciplinary inquiry into ‘the witch’, ‘witchcraft’, witch-hunting, and magic. I fed from various sources to try to understand why we have been forced to reject and forget our healing essence. I read books, articles, and thesis from the fields of History, Social Sciences, Law, Literature, Visual Culture, and Ecofeminism which tackled those subjects; I visited museums and library collections; I listened to podcasts; I watched films, I spoke to and interviewed female researchers who have been studying witch-hunting in Brazil, Europe and the UK. This research process provided me not only a more in-depth understanding of the intricate threads of History, but also of the political, economic and social aspects of misogyny.
While I was analysing recipe books by contemporary witches and from fairy tales, as well as those written by women who lived during the heights of the Modern Age witch-hunt, I decided: “This project must be a book! A book inspired by witches’ magic recipe books that inhabit our shared social-imaginary; a book that chronicles the ‘magical rituals’ I undertook in order to make myself disappear”. I absorb the aura of pagan rituals to praise these powers of care and healing we inherited from female shamans, healers and midwives who came before us, to shape this book as a form of resistance, a counterpoint to the stigmatisation and persecution of the female being we have lived over time –labelled as ‘witch’, ‘hag’, ‘macumbeira’. I wanted the book to celebrate this ancient, magical way we –women– have to deal with love and remedy, deconstructing that misogynistic discourse and bringing about a new perspective based on the power of the ‘woman-being’.
The book was designed in collaboration with the Mexico-based studio HagoLibros, which is dedicated to crafting artist books by hand. Throughout this process I also exchanged reflections and ideas with curator, researcher and artist Ângela Ferreira –who welcomed this project with kindness and care and contributed a text featured in the book.
Between the 15th and the 18th centuries approximately 60,000 people were executed in Europe, and thousands of others in the US, charged with ‘witchcraft’. It is estimated that 70 per cent of those individuals consisted of women. The horror of the accusations, torture, trials, and executions at public squares that permeated the daily life of that time is –in fact– the unbearable picture of the prejudice and persecution against women that still remains alive nowadays, worldwide. As a woman born and bred in Latin America, I have realised how much of that imagery and stigma we have inherited from the Global North, and how it has resonated in the Global South. It also overlaps with a persecution against alterity, against the cosmovisions of the Amerindians and African diasporas. The United Nations has reported an increase in the number of women killed worldwide accused of witchcraft, in the last decade. As extremism and intolerance seem to be regaining force in the political and social realms nowadays, I feel that it is urgent for contemporary society to revisit and discuss these issues –in particular, reassessing the historical debt to all women, past and present– beyond geographical borders.
To articulate this historical debt to women and celebrate our healer-essence, the book brings together elements from various sources that connect the Global North with the Global South, past with present, and photography with other media (illustration, expired analogue film, 17th-century women’s recipes for natural remedies, current-time fortune teller leaflets, cyanotype, manuscripts and poetry).
In her book Witches, Witch-hunting, and Women, social scientist and activist Silvia Federici argues:
“[…] The witch hunts were the means by which women in Europe were educated about their new social tasks and a massive defeat was inflicted on Europe’s ‘lower classes,’ who needed to learn about the power of the state to desist from any form of resistance to its rule. At the stakes not only were the bodies of the ‘witches’ destroyed, so was a whole world of social relations that had been the basis of women’s social power and a vast body of knowledge that women had transmitted from mother to daughter over the generations—knowledge of herbs, of the means of contraception or abortion, of what magic to use to obtain the love of men. This is what was consumed on every village square with the execution of the women accused, who would be exhibited in the most abject state: tied up with iron chains and given to the fire. When in our imagination we multiply this scene by the thousands, we begin to understand what the witch hunt meant for Europe, in terms of not only its motifs but also its effects.” (p.33)
As such, I conceived this book to evoke the atmosphere of pagan rituals that inhabit our collective memory, hoping that, by inviting the reader to a journey into magic, it can contribute to this debate.
Photo-Rituals for Disappearance celebrates women’s power: our unique way of dealing with love and death, of healing and nourishing; reclaiming our history. In the form of a ‘ritual/recipe’ book which, by definition, exists to pass on the craft (knowledge) and reach future generations–, I hope it can be an object of women’s pride, resistance and resilience.
* Purchase the book here (or drop me a line at mcardosoribeiro@gmail.com).
* A video of the book is available here
Photo-Rituals for Disappearance
Mexico | Brazil
2024
eKphrasis Publishing.
Limited edition handmade by HagoLibros studio, using acid-free material.
Design by HagoLibros studio and Marilene Ribeiro.
Critical text by Ângela Ferreira (aka Berlinde).
A book by Marilene Ribeiro
In collaboration with Anelisa Cardoso, Clarice Marotta, Gabriela Sá and Gabriela Souza.
18.5 x 25 cm | 100 pages | hardcover
ISBN: 978-607-59369-3-2
