I stayed in the courts of kings and saw voodoo rituals. Michal Novotný’s photos of the year

(2nd part of the series) – The series Photos of 2023 presents the best images of photographers whose work readers can find on Aktuálně.cz, in Hospodářské noviny, in the weekly Ekonom and other titles of the Economia publishing house. Michal Novotný, a photographer awarded at World Press Photo 2006, talks about his work today.

Africa, courts of kings and ancient rituals

I have been to Africa many times, but usually to countries affected by endless wars or famines, such as Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan or Somalia. But when you fight every day for survival, there is little strength, appetite and resources left to maintain ancient traditions and rituals.

Last fall, I went to West African Benin to photograph traditional religions and discovered for myself a magical Africa as if from ancient travel books. Among the Yoruba tribe near the Nigerian border, I photographed festivities with Egungun masquerades. Eerie masks are worn by members of secret societies and represent ancestral spirits. The Yorubas take them extremely seriously and believe that their touch can cause death.

I also photographed countless bloody voodoo rituals in which bulls, goats, poultry, but also dogs and cats are sacrificed. In Benin, voodoo (vodun) is recognized as an official religion alongside Christianity and Islam. I stayed in the courts of several kings and fell in love with the colorful Beninese cuisine during banquets and at street stalls.

Easter masks of devils and death in Sicilian Prizzi

Before Easter, I boarded the Zeus Palace ferry with my motorhome in Livorno, which sailed with us to Palermo in less than a day. I have already photographed Holy Week in the Spanish Zamora, in Sardinia or among the Lusatian Serbs, and I went to Sicily for the third time.

Rituals unseen elsewhere have been preserved in the interior of the mountainous island. In Aidone, giant puppets of saints walk through the narrow streets, in San Fratello, colorful masks of Jews frolic rejoicing in the death of Jesus on the cross, in Caccamo, a boy rides a donkey dressed as a priest, and the city of Prizzi will be dominated by masks of devils and death for one day.

I had a great itinerary that fell apart when I hit a tree stump hidden in the grass while looking for a place to sleep and damaged the undercarriage. I found out during the last trip that no one works during Easter and there is no point in looking for help at a car repair shop. I temporarily repaired the residence and preferred not to move anywhere.

That’s why I only photographed the procession of penitents in the mountain town of Enna during the entire holy week. Still, I managed to take a photo or two, which I will one day include in a forthcoming book on religious rituals, and I returned home slowly and cautiously, but quite satisfied.

Horse traders in Kyrgyzstan and Feast of the Sacrifice in Uzbekistan

At the beginning of the summer, I visited horse traders in remote southern Kyrgyzstan, whom I had befriended during two winter trips, when I photographed alaman ulak – a kind of horse rugby, in which several hundred riders participate and instead of a squishy ball, they fight for a dead calf or ovine.

They treated me fabulously, but it was the height of the fruit harvest and everyone had a lot of work and little time. I crossed over to neighboring Uzbekistan and celebrated Kurban Hayit, or the Feast of Sacrifice, with the local Muslims in the ultra-Orthodox, little-visited Fergana Valley.

By praying to God and sacrificing sheep and goats, they remember the obedience of the prophet Abraham, who was willing to sacrifice his own son to God. The meat from the sacrificed animals is of course eaten, so I learned to cook the excellent soup shorpo and the national dish plov.

Then I boarded a high-speed train hurtling through the steppe to the legendary cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. According to recent photos, it looked like their historic centers had changed little since the days when Hodža Nasredin, a porter whose stories my parents read to me as a child, raced around the famous mosques and madrasas on a donkey.

The disappointment could not have been greater. In recent years, under new leadership, Uzbekistan has been trying to attract foreign tourists, and both cities have undergone brutal reconstruction and completely lost their atmosphere. It acts as a tourist attraction freshly built to entertain tourist tours similar to the fake Hallstatt built in China.

You don’t need to travel far for good photos

The small village of Letařovice in northern Bohemia reminded me that I don’t have to go to the other side of the world for good photos. The costumed procession on the Feast of Corpus Christi in a beautiful landscape was a breathtaking spectacle. We were also lucky to have dramatic storm clouds, from which it only started to rain at the very end.

In the middle of August, I got into the motorhome again and drove to the Moisei Monastery in the Romanian region of Maramureş. In the afternoon before the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, pilgrims from a wide area begin to arrive there. The priests bring in groups of singing children in festive attire. Many pilgrims pray all night in the monastery gardens and the celebrations continue into the next morning. Maramures is undoubtedly the most traditional part of Romania and I have been coming back here since the nineties.

Stunning weddings in the Tara Oasului area

On the way back I stopped in the Tara Oasului region. Most of the local population toils all year round in the countries of Western Europe. At the end of the summer, they take vacations and return home to have incredibly expensive outdoor weddings. An average party in Oasi costs about fifty thousand euros (approx. 1.2 million crowns) and two to three hundred people are invited.

More than fifteen hundred guests will probably come to a big wedding, which is a lot even by Romanian standards. Families often hold two weddings at once – one in traditional costumes and a year later a wedding in modern clothing, during which the village women have the opportunity to dress in the latest Parisian fashion.

Before Christmas, I’m slowly packing again and I have seven weeks in Indonesia and then in Singapore I’ll join an expedition of anthropologists to the Sepik River on the island of New Guinea.

Picture from the wedding in Tara Oasului | Photo: Michal Novotný

Michal Novotný (*1973)

is a Czech photographer who focuses on various manifestations of religion and faith during his travels around the world. His career started at the age of 18, when he hitchhiked to photograph the conflict between Serbia and Croatia. In 1995, as an experienced war reporter, he joined the weekly Reflex, where he worked until 1998. This was followed by work for the magazine Pátek Lidových noviny, where he worked with a short break until 2009. Now he is a freelancer and his photos are published in the most prestigious world newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, GEO, Time or Stern. His pictures won an award at the World Press Photo in 2006.

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