Phyllis Galembo
Sepia International through Fri 29 (see Chelsea).

Since 1985, Phyllis Galembo has been photographing traditional priests and priestesses in Nigeria, as well as practitioners of African diasporic religions-- voudou in Haiti, Candomblé in Brazil. Her lush color portraits convey the mystery and range of their rituals, while documenting the pomp and glamour of their costumes, altars and religious objects.
The photographs in this 20-year survey can be loosely divided into two groups. Works from the '80s and '90s show devotees in spaces that have been transformed-- sometimes with little more than paint-- into shrines. In one image, a Haitian priestess stands between bright green walls under a canopy of red and blue cloth; elsewhere, a Brazilian girl dressed as Oxum, the orixá "spirit" of love, wears a gold dress, reflecting the sun painted behind her.
More recent photographs focus on the transformation of people, rather than of their environments. Masquerade dancers form Cross River, Nigeria, are covered from head to toe in striped and patchwork costumes, with unearthly faces perched on top of their heads, Carnaval performers from Jacmel, Haiti-- like the rakish Chief of the Devil Band, wielding an ax while wearing a black hat, red scarf and gold lamé skirt-- become creatures of fantasy.
Galembo's primary interest is the wearer's belief in the power of ritual costume to alter their everyday reality: The Cross River masqueraders become the revived spirits of dead ancestors while Haiti's disenfranchised poor, hidden under face paint and papier-mâché masks, become empowered political satirists. As her latest photographs make clear, Galembo wants views to see and appreciate who her subjects are, but more than that, who they believe themselves to be. - Anne Doran

Phyllis Galembo, Sepia International, 148 West 24th Street, Chelsea, Through July 29

This exhibition, Ms. Galembo's first gallery show in New York in nearly a decade, is a small retrospective. Photographs from the 1980's and 90's depict individuals in what Americans would call their places of worship. Several show Olokun priestesses from Benin City posed in white gowns in front of altars arrayed with objects. Malant Pierre, a Haitian voodoo priest dressed as Azaka, the spirit of agriculture, is seen against a wall painted with blue dots and figures. (These motifs may bring to mind the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the son of a Haitian-born accountant. ) In contrast, photographs taken in 2004 isolate lavishly costumed and masked dancers against relatively plain backgrounds. Lavish can mean painted with red and green for the Haitian carnival in Jacmel, as is the case with three small boys. Or it can mean brightly knitted head-to-toe bodysuits for three masked dancers from Cross River. (These could well have influenced the textile-covered sculptures of artists like Jim Drain and Justin Samson.)

While quite striking, these images lack the richness and power of the earlier images, in which the subjects seem to have touched every square inch of their settings. But they contribute their share to the revelatory nature of this show.

ROBERTA SMITH

Paper edition image, left: Akata Dance Masquerade, Cross River, Nigeria, 2004.
Online edition image, right: Egbele dance masquerade of Osibi, Cross River, Nigeria, 2004.

PHYLLIS GALEMBO
In Galembo’s photographs of carnival celebrants and vodou priests, her subjects are usually costumed and masked, but even when their faces are uncovered it’s clear that they’ve left their everyday identities far behind. Made over the past twenty years in Nigeria, Haiti, and Brazil, these terrifically theatrical images suggest that clothes—and a belief in the power of transformation—can indeed make the man or woman. Although the outfits here (many of which involve cross-dressing and body paint) can be comically outlandish, we can't fail to appreciate their ritual weight. Through July 29. (Sepia, 148 W. 24th St. 212-645-9444.)

Went to an opening of a photo exposition by my friend Phyllis Galembo last night. I hadn’t seen her new work for a few years, so this was a chance to catch up. Wow. I was knocked out. The show was in a relatively out of the way gallery (Sepia International), that is not on street level, so there won’t be the walk-in traffic of the Chelsea galleries. Worth checking out, as I think it puts a lot of contemporary “fictional” photo work to shame. Hell, it puts a lot of stuff in other mediums outside photography to shame too.

I was familiar with her photos from Brazil, Cuba and Africa — many of which are formal portraits of practitioners of Candomblé, Santeria and the African roots of these religions. We were introduced at least 15 years ago by Robert Farris Thompson, the Yale professor and author. Her newer Haitian stuff of course touches on Voudoun, but there are lot of Jacmel carnival participant portraits too — these are astounding. And there are new African images that connect the dots between a lot of the New World cultures.

Most of all, the work is, in my opinion, not romantic — some of the stuff is hard, emotional, serious as death and as a result the beauty has depth. I’ve seen Phyllis work (in Brazil) and she affects a slightly ditzy casual demeanor — that disguises the fact that she knows exactly what she wants and how to get it. It helps her get these kids to stand against this wall while carnival rages all around them.

Or this man, comfortable in his housedress, holding a mirror and a paintbrush!

Or this participant in that Atam Masquerade in Nigeria?

There’s probably a debt to Irving Penn’s famous series of portraits of “exotic” peoples here — his pix of Peruvian Indians and Mudmen — taken in a portable formal “studio”. But somehow those seemed like an extension of the live Indian or the Venus Hottentot in the sideshow or in the Natural History Museums compared to this.

Besides, these subjects are in costume. They have intentionally transformed themselves into something exotic, charged, even frightening. Here is combined a long deep legacy of dress-up for masquerade, for carnival, for possession by the Gods combined with personal creativity and ingenuity. These are not people in their ordinary dress — they are intentionally fantastic, shocking, wild.