At Porto-Novo’s Festival des Masques, photographer Kelvin Selasie Quist turns his camera toward the masks, movement and crowds of a tradition being encountered by another generation.
A raffia masquerade turns in the square before the temple. The fibers move a half second behind the body inside them, so the mask appears to spin on its own. This is the frame the photographer described: the moment the atmosphere changed.
At the Festival des Masques in Porto-Novo, music, movement and the reaction of the crowd are part of what photographer Kelvin Selasie Quist remembers most. Over two days in July, he photographed the masquerades moving through the festival, the people gathered around them and the moments in between.
“I was drawn to the energy, colors, masks, and the cultural depth behind the celebration,” he says. “What keeps me fascinated is that every moment tells a different story.”
For Quist, the act of photographing the festival is also connected to what happens between generations.
“They show the importance of preserving culture and passing traditions from one generation to another,” he says. “As a young person, I think documenting them helps keep these stories alive.”
He describes the work primarily as cultural documentation, but says he is also attentive to the spiritual and human emotions surrounding the masks.
One moment stayed with him.
“The moment when the mask appeared, the whole atmosphere changed,” he says. “The music, movement, and reaction of the crowd created a moment that felt powerful and unforgettable.”
What follows is what he saw.
Women in white file between the festival tents before the procession begins.
Elders wait for the procession to reach them. The beadwork and coral signal rank.Four masquerades cross the arena in front of the grandstand.A masquerade faced entirely in cowrie shells, bell in gloved hand. Cowries were currency across West Africa for centuries. A mask surfaced with them carries wealth, literally, on its face.The procession from behind: carved wooden superstructures, each a crowded shelf of figures and animals, each one a history worn as architecture.A young guide walks beside a masquerade crowned with carved twin figures. He is barefoot, in wax print, maybe sixteen. The mask cannot see. Someone from the next generation has to walk it through the world.A dancer in a horned headdress performs for a barrier line of photographers. Every lens in the frame is pointed at a tradition older than photography. The question of who documents whom, and for what, runs under the whole festival.
A masquerade opens its cape to full circle, the beaded panel at its center reading Omo Nide. The cloth is the mask. When it spreads, the figure fills the street.A masquerade named Ayelabola on its own visor waits in white lace. Between performances the masks do not become costumes. They sit, and they are attended to.
Young performers in masks of painted cardboard and cowrie shells. Nobody issued these. Transmission is not a ceremony that happens to the next generation. It is something the next generation does with its own hands.
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