White Man

White Man is the portrait of Ogã Oscar of Oxaguian, an Italian man who serves as a Candomblé priest, surrounded by votive offerings at an altar that he created within a storage room of his house.

About White Man

In early 2001, I went to a public office to ask for clarification about tax benefits for associations. After reading some of the documents I had with me, the clerk with whom I had an appointment, asked if I could return with a person listed in one of the deeds. He wanted to ask her if she spoke Yoruba. I then discovered that I was facing a Candomblé priest eager to understand the meaning of the prayers he recited during rituals. He told me about a terreiro somewhere in the Po Valley and that due to the distance, he had to perform the sacrifices at home. His dedication to the Yoruba God Ogun meant that in the ritual he had to wear white – even his shoes.

At the end of 2005 I recounted this story, so I reached out to tell him I wanted to make him a portrait. He was willing to be photographed, and we agreed to take the picture inside the storage room that housed the domestic altar. We made it in June 2006.

The title of this work came out a few weeks after the photo was taken, when the Holter Museum in Helena, Montana, made an invitation to visual artists to respond to white supremacy. The museum had several copies of Ben Klassen’s The White Man’s Bible, purchased in stock by the Montana Human Rights Network to get them out of circulation. They sent me a couple of copies, but instead of working on the object itself, I decided to respond to Klassen with my photo: here was a white man who dressed completely in white because of an African deity.

© Cristiano Berti

2024