ABSTRACT
Candomblé, which means “dance in honor of the gods,” originated among the Afro-Brazilian community of Bahia as a mixture of West African and European spirituality. In Salvador de Bahia, women wear a distinct liturgical costume that consists of a white camizu (blouse), a long saia (skirt), a wrapped ojá (headtie), and various ileki (beaded necklaces). This recognizable attire not only identified these women as followers of Candomblé, but as active participants in religious ceremonies. Through a selection of photographs by Marc Ferrez (1843–1923) and Alberto Henschel (1827–1882), this chapter seeks to examine how these images of Bahian women in Candomblé dress, which were mainly circulated among tourists, contributed to the popularization and misconception of Afro-Brazilian women.
Rather than taking photographs of Candomblé rituals, many of which were suppressed during the nineteenth century, the photographers displaced the participants into a photographic studio, thus undermining the very nature of the ritual, including its communal nature. Their solitary and frozen presence, and their contrived poses not only fictionalized the cultural experiences of these women, but the photographic medium itself validated the supposed facticity of the image. Inscribed with various markers of difference, these photographs, which often circulated as inexpensive and accessible cartes de visite, gave new meaning to this type of dress, and to the women, who, in estranged spaces and random poses, encapsulated the myth of the Bahiana.
