Mau's images of Haiti, documenting Vodou practice and the Duvalier dictatorship, offer a case study on ethnographic photography and the post-colonial gaze
Pbk, 7.5 x 9.25 in. / 500 pgs / 200 color / 100 bw. | 1/13/2026 | Awaiting stock $65.00
Published by Hatje Cantz. Edited with text by Dora Imhof, Gina Athena Ulysse. Text by Yveline Alexis, Kyrah Malika Daniels, Nathalie David, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Hans Fässler, Sasha Huber, et al.
Trained in stage design and press photography, German photographer Leonore Mau (1916–2013) spent the 1970s and 1980s traveling with writer Hubert Fichte to research Afrodiasporic religions. Though largely unpublished, these images still present us with challenges: what does it mean to look at them today, in light of decades of discussion on artistic ethnographic photographs? As a case study, A Year and a Day focuses on Mau's pictures of Haiti taken in the 1970s during the Duvalier dictatorship. The title refers to the cosmology of Vodou, according to which souls live underwater for a year and a day before rebirth. Amid Mau's previously unpublished images, authors delve deeper into the historical background of Haiti in the 1970s, the relationship between Germany and Haiti, the photography of rituals and the ethics of both looking and taking pictures.
