MEB 2183

Research by: Gustau Nerín Abad
Institució dipositària: Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Món (MuEC)
Nº inventari institucional: MEB 2183
Breu descripció institucional: Photograph of ‘Buti shepherds in Efulan, playing the harp’. Fang, okak, Efak.
Advertiment: Definition given in the institution's own inventories, which we do not necessarily share and which in some cases may be offensive or the result of prejudice.
Material: Photographic paper
Advertiment: Terms used by scientific and academic institutions to describe the material collections held by museums of ethnology, natural history or zoology, which overlook other non-Western forms of designation and classification. While we do not necessarily share these terms, we nevertheless use them in provenance research such as this.
Mesures: 6 cm x 6 cm
Mètode d’adquisició: Photographs taken by members of the museum during the 1959 expedition.
Advertiment: This refers to the process of acquisition of the object/specimen by the institution currently holding it, and not to the first transfer it underwent from its original context. If you have information that may be relevant to the provenance of the object/specimen, please write to comunicacio@traficants.org.

Lloc d'adquisició: Carried out by Jordi Sabater Pi, a member of the museum's own research team.
Advertiment: Data extracted from the documentary collections of the institution, which may be erroneous or incorrectly transcribed. The historical toponymy (often of colonial origin) has been retained to give coherence to the research.
Place of production/origin: Efulan, Gabon
Advertiment: Data extracted from the documentary collections of the institution, which may be erroneous or incorrectly transcribed. The historical toponymy (often of colonial origin) has been retained to give coherence to the research.
Collector: Carried out by the museum's own team
Advertiment: The personal or institutional names that appear, often associated with the colonial order, may be offensive or the result of prejudice. These references are used to give coherence to the research.
Donant: Carried out by the museum's own team
Advertiment: The personal or institutional names that appear, often associated with the colonial order, may be offensive or the result of prejudice. These references are used to give coherence to the research.
Classification group: In all likelihood, this photograph is one of a series—those between Nos. 2179 and 2185 in the inventory—taken on the same day and in the same place. It is one of a series of photographs taken during the 1959 expedition to Guinea.
Advertiment: Data extracted from the documentary collections of the institution, which may be erroneous or incorrectly transcribed, and which we do not necessarily share. We keep a terminology (tribe, people, ethnicity, race, country, etc.), created or manipulated during the colonial period, to give coherence to the research.
Holder of the legal property rights: Museum of Ethnology and World Cultures
Advertiment: Reference is made to the holder of the rights recognized by the legal and juridical systems of the former colonial metropolises, regardless of the property rights that may emanate from the communities of origin.

Summary of results

This photograph shows the image of followers of a religion, the Bwiti, which was forbidden in Spanish Guinea, and for that reason was taken in Gabon. It exemplifies the contradiction between colonial practices and the anthropological discourse of the official institutions themselves (such as the Museo Etnológico y Colonial de Barcelona).

This photograph does not show a Bwiti ceremony, but a staging of it by two members of said worship in a temple of this religion.
It would be useful if all the photographic collections—which are not too difficult to scan—were to be shared online in order to make them accessible to the people of Equatorial Guinea.

Chronological reconstruction of provenance

Photograph taken around 16 April 1959 in Efulan – Efak. The place would be the chapel dedicated to the Bwiti leader and martyr Nguema Biban, ‘executed on this site in the time of Governor Pompiguant’, also called Tamamanga. August Panyella and Sabater Pi visited it to document the Bwiti. In 1955, the American anthropologist James W. Fernandez had met Sabater and Panyella in Barcelona. Fernandez had made some brief stays in Guinea and, in one of them, recorded part of a Bwiti session in Akurenam, accompanied by Sabater (with whom they would end up sharing a deep friendship, even spending summers together with their families in the Picos de Europa). It was probably Fernandez’s study that aroused the curiosity of the director of the Ethnological Museum for Bwiti, despite the fact that Panyella usually favoured more ‘authentic’ traditions.

Estimation of provenance

Photograph taken at a Bwiti temple in Gabon, with the collaboration of two members of the congregation who staged the ritual.

Possible alternative classifications

The photograph could be entitled ‘Recreation, in Gabon, of a Bwiti ceremony (a religion banned in Spanish Guinea)’, which is what it really is in this case.

Complementary sources

Archives:

CRAI UB – Belles Arts. Fons Sabater Pi:
E.1.1.2 Fotografies 81 a 91, sobre cerimònia de bwiti a Gabon (algunes d’elles còpies de les guardades al Museu).
B1 i B2 correspondència rebuda i enviada per Jordi Sabater Pi.

Museu Etnològic i de Cultures del Mon. Arxiu. Notes Museu Música. Notes Guinea-Fernando Poo i adreces. Fotos expedició. Notes i bibliografia I. Expedició Guinea. Vegeu <http://hdl.handle.net/10970/media/b4b78568-301c-b699-df0e-0e4e570a7a6e >.

Bibliography:

Aranzadi, J. (2016). Entrevista a James Fernandez. Éndoxa, 37, 79-95.

Bureau, R. (1996). Bocayé! Essai sur le bwiti fang. París: L’Harmattan.

Fernandez, J. W. (2019). Bwiti: An ethnography of the religious imagination in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gaulme, F. (1979). Le Bwiti chez les Nkomi: Association cultuelles et évolution historique sur le littoral gabonais. Journal des africanistes, 49(2), 37-87.

Mary, A. (1983). La naissance à l’envers: Essai sur le rituel du Bwiti-Fang au Gabon. París: L’Harmattan.

Świderski, S. (1965). Le Bwiti, société d’initiation chez les Apindji au Gabon. Anthropos, 60, 541-576.

Veciana, A. de (1958). La secta del bwiti en la Guinea Española. Madrid: CSIC-IDEA.