|
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture > Exhibitions Invoking the Spirit: Worship Traditions in the African WorldFrom August 1, 2003 through February 29, 2004
The product of more than twenty-five years of travel and research by New York Times photojournalist Chester Higgins, Jr., this photographic essay explores worship practices across ethnic, national, cultural, and religious boundaries throughout the African world and documents the vitality and diversity of the global African religious experience. The images featured in the exhibition also serve as the central theme of Higgins’s book, Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa. Culled from his archive of almost a million photographs documenting the global African experience, the photographs in Invoking the Spirit explore the myriad ways in which African peoples venerate their sacred deities, invoking their presence and spirit in their life worlds. Documented here are the sacred places African peoples—in Africa and the Americas—create and/or consecrate; the diverse spiritual leaders who are involved in the conduct of worship activities; the universal use of prayer as a formal means of communicating with God and the spirits; the rites, rituals, and ceremonies Africans use to pay tribute to God and invoke His/Her presence; and the roles of music and dance in religious services, ceremonies, and rituals. |
