Márcio Vasconcelos: The Ancestral Threads of Bantu Magic

How old are you? Where do you currently live and work?

66 years old – São Luís, MA.

Tell us about your journey in photography. When did you start photographing and why? What role does photography play in your life?

In my university life, I studied Mechanical Engineering and Physical Education, nothing to do with photography. Later, I joined Banco do Brasil and with my first salary, I bought the best camera available at the time. That’s when a photographer began to be born in me. I photographed everything, like an avid amateur discovering light and shadow. I decided to leave BB with a voluntary dismissal plan they offered, the PDV; with the severance pay, I bought a plot of land in the center of São Luís and built a very well-equipped and spacious studio. I worked a lot and made good money with advertising photography.

After some time in advertising, I realized that everything I did was disposable and served the clients’ objectives, but it didn’t satisfy me; I didn’t feel like the owner of the idea. I changed fields and started doing my own authorial work, where I would be the idealizer, researcher, and producer of the research and the images, able to do all of this alone. My way of photographing is very solitary. I am always restless and searching for themes for new projects. Photography is my way of living intensely.

Tell us about your finalist work for the FotoDoc Photo Contest 2025. When and where was it created? What is its concept? How does it fit into your photographic practice?

Unveiling the African diaspora leads to the conclusion that Latin America is, definitively, the epicenter of the extraordinary in the world. This realization becomes clear when creatively exploring secular connections between Europe (Portugal), Africa (Congo and Angola), and Latin America (Brazil and Cuba).

Bantu is the name given to numerous populations who lived in the southern equatorial portion of Africa; their presence was so strong that they ended up occupying a vast territorial extension.

It is understood that these peoples—diverse in their languages, social and political organization—began their occupation in 3000 BC, being one of the main groups enslaved until the end of the 17th century.

Religiosity is one of the main markers of these societies, which believed in the constant interaction between two worlds: the visible (of human beings, the earth) and the invisible (of spirits and gods). And it is precisely with this gaze toward the sacred that this Project recovers the common imaginary of an ancient Africa re-signified in Cuba and Brazil.

If in Brazil, over approximately three hundred years, about 4 million Africans arrived enslaved, Cuba legally received until 1867 about 600,000.

In Cuba, more specifically in Havana, this Project addressed the cultural and religious manifestations related to Palo Monte, also known as “Regla Conga” or Cuban Brujería, whose ancestry traces back to slaves from the area now known as the Lower Congo.

In Brazil, the focus was on the terreiros (places of worship) located in quilombos (maroon communities) in the Western Lowlands of Maranhão, in the cities of Codó and Guimarães. In this case, the religions studied were Pajés de Negro, Terecô, and Tambor de Mina.

As a researcher-photographer, I identify with themes related to religions of African origin, although I am not an initiate. The majority of my completed and ongoing works are always related to ancestry.

What projects are you currently working on? What are your near-future plans for photographic production?

Project 1.
I am currently editing a project about a trip I took to Benin, West Africa. This work is based on the research of French photographer and anthropologist Pierre Verger and Sergio Ferretti, a Carioca/Maranhense anthropologist and museologist. They claim that the former Queen of Dahomey, Nã Agotimé, was sold into slavery in Brazil and would be the founder of the Casa das Minas in São Luís do Maranhão (Querebentã de Zomadônu), in the mid-19th century. The oldest Tambor de Mina Terreiro in Brazil.

To learn more about this story, and tracing the reverse path of Nã Agotimé, I went to Benin, in Western Africa, accompanied by Beninese anthropologist Hippolyte Brice Sogbossi, a PhD Professor of Anthropology at the Federal University of Sergipe. There we visited the cities of Cotonou, Abomey, Allada, Ouidah, Calavi, and Porto Novo, where we interviewed and recorded priests, rituals, and sacred spaces. The goal of the trip was to ascertain how the Vodun rituals, the attire, the drumming, and the songs in Fon still retain similarities between the origin in Benin and the destination in São Luís do Maranhão, of this religious manifestation worshiping Voduns.

Project 2.
I have been immersed for over 4 years in a project at Casa Fanti-Ashanti, one of the most traditional Tambor de Mina terreiros in Maranhão, with 71 years since its foundation. The goal is to edit a book showing the entire ritual calendar of the Casa.

Project 3.
Also already underway is a photography book inspired by the novel “Noite sobre Alcântara” (Night over Alcântara) by Maranhense writer Josué Montelo.

The story takes place in the city of Alcântara, Maranhão, an important center of the Maranhense aristocracy during the Empire. The book tells the story of the decay of Alcântara, which became an almost dead city after the abolition of slavery, the change in economy, and the proclamation of the Republic.

The book’s narrator reconstructs the work through memory, transforming it into images, art, and literature.

In 2016, I did a similar work, this time inspired by the poem “Poema Sujo” (Dirty Poem), a masterpiece by the Maranhense Poet Ferreira Gullar. A work that won the Funarte Marc Ferrez Photography Prize.