An elder woman bears the facial scarification marks of her rural tribe. Cut or burned into the skin, these patterns are worn with pride and are historically used to identify those taken into slavery and ensure their return home.

A tribal elder, her scarification extending across her chest and shoulders. The markings carry layers of meaning: identity, lineage, and a defiant spirit that has endured across generations.

Beads, sweat, fabric and gaze come together as forms of presence, turning this portrait, photographed during Gambada at the Ouidah festival in Benin, into an intense encounter between viewer and subject

During a Kokou ceremony in Ouidah, Benin, the figure has doused himself in palm oil and yellow paste; both this colour and substance are believed to open a channel to the spirits. Here the ritual force settles briefly into the stillness of the photographic frame.

A young Kokou dancer stands with quiet pride, his arms and chest marked by ritual scars cut by scythe. The cuts are believed to invoke the protective power of the warrior spirit, and the marks are worn with pride, symbolising strength and fearlessness.

This figure is a visual force in this ritual ceremony. Layered, beaded and blazing with colour, the body is concealed and transformed, allowing the wearer to appear as a returned ancestral force.

Deep in Kokou trance, a performer endures feats of physical endurance that defy ordinary limits. The voodoo ceremony is intense and consuming and the body becomes vessel for something beyond it.

Caught mid-turn, this figure holds the cape open as if the cloth itself has become a body. In the ancestral masquerade tradition, concealment, colour and movement allow the figure to appear as a returned ancestral presence.

The carved face, cloth veil and sculptural crest of this masquerade figure is led by drums and movement to bring the spiritual forces into public view for protection and blessing.

The yellow masquerade figure carries a calm, watchful presence. Through mask, costume, rhythm and gesture, the performer is concealed so that a spirit presence can enter public view, moving through the crowd as both ceremony and encounter.

A Bariba rider leans into speed, his cloth lifting behind him as horse and body move as one. The adorned horse carries the pride, status and inherited discipline of Benin’s equestrian traditions.

Two riders pass through dust and light with their horses dressed in colour and movement. Among the Bariba, horsemanship is both display and discipline, bringing together race, pageantry, skill and the public performance of rank.

On a richly adorned horse, the rider holds the reins with ease, his patterned cloth echoing the colour of the saddle and harness. The image catches a moment of control within motion, where dress, horse and rider become one moving form.

Three riders surge forward in formation, their robes, turbans and decorated horses cutting through the dust. The scene carries the energy of a race, but also the older language of ceremony, honour and mastery held within Bariba horse culture.

Driven by a handler's stick, the masked figure moves through the village like a force of nature and the crowd gives way. Here presence and power are indistinguishable.

In this Porto-Novo masquerade, the body turns itself into a trick of vision. When the performer bends, the head carried on the back becomes the face of the figure, shifting the costume between human form, animal force and phallic sign.

With an orange headdress and cloth caught mid-flight, the dancer lifts inherited stories into motion. Performed before gathered spectators and dignitaries, the dance carries rhythm, memory and play through the body.

The masked dancer turns before the band, the cape opening like wings as the drums beat the pace. Music and movement work together: the musicians lead the figure forward, then follow its turns, each step pulling sound back into the body.

In Yoruba-Nago masquerade traditions in Benin, masked dance can honour the primordial mother and the role of women. This masked figure is crouched beneath a small flame that symbolises the maternal force and has rattling anklets that beat a rhythm to the dance.

Framed by steps, window bars, ledges and shadow, this image is almost architectural: blue against blue, angle against angle with the man anchoring the composition. It is taken in Ganvié, the lake village built as a place of refuge from slave raids on Lake Nokoué, near Cotonou, Benin.

Against the soft blue architecture of Ganvié, a boy in yellow and green becomes the centre of the composition. Colour and lines create a balance, while the lake village’s history as a place of refuge from slave raids remains just beneath the surface.

A man stands within the ochre, yellow, blue and green geometry of the Great Mosque of Porto-Novo. This impressive façade is inspired by architectural knowledge that was carried back across the Atlantic by formerly enslaved Africans and their descendants who returned from Brazil and are often referred to as Afro-Brazilian or Aguda communities.

Standing against weathered walls and upon dusty red-tinged ground, this masquerade figure appears as a bridge between the living and the dead. Fully concealed by cloth, colour and mask, he becomes an ancestral presence as he stands tall and proud.

Standing before a weathered wall, this masquerade figure is swathed in layers of bright cloth, with green fronds rising from the head. It speaks to the Guelede tradition’s honouring of mothers, female force and social life.

A sail catches the light on Lake Nokoué, carrying a pirogue through the waters of Ganvié. Around it, fishing stakes mark the lake’s daily rhythms. Founded by the Tofinu people as a refuge from slave raids in the 17th century, Ganvié’s name is often translated as “we survived.”