There are places where time is no longer a straight line but a circle. There are moments when the past is not remembered. It returns. It walks. It breathes among the living.
In Porto Novo, in front of the Vodun Temple, the Mask Festival is not a performance. It is an encounter between the visible and the invisible, between memory and the present, between humanity and the ancestral forces that continue to shape it.
The first figures emerge in an almost sacred silence. Draped in brilliant white and wrapped in delicate lace that sways with every breath of wind, they seem to glide instead of walking. Their wide black hats hide every face, reminding us that the identity of the person beneath the costume matters less than the spirit being embodied.
In that suspended moment, the individual disappears and the symbol takes its place.
Each step awakens a memory buried deep within the red earth of Benin. The carved staffs are not simple objects. They feel like extensions of an ancient language carried faithfully from one generation to another.
Then the great figure of straw appears.
Towering. Alive. Almost unreal.
Thousands of woven fibers come together to create a presence that is at once a tree, a harvest, a forest and the rhythm of the seasons. Nature is no longer the background. It becomes the main character. Guided by initiates dressed in white, this majestic presence moves with quiet dignity. No one rushes to explain it. Here, people choose to witness before they seek to understand.
Then the drums begin to speak.
Their vibrations travel through the body before reaching the ears. Every rhythm opens an invisible bridge between generations. Children discover what their ancestors have always known, while elders recognize movements they have carried throughout their lives. For a brief moment, everyone belongs to the same story.
Perhaps this is the true wealth of Benin's cultural heritage. These traditions do not survive behind museum glass. They live in the footsteps of dancers, in the dust raised by ceremonies, in the heartbeat of drums and in the silent gaze of those who remember.
I chose to tell this story in black and white.
Not to remove color from the world, but to reveal what color sometimes conceals. Without the brilliance of vibrant fabrics, the eye discovers textures, the delicacy of lace, the roughness of straw fibers, the play of light and shadow, and the profound silence that exists between two drumbeats. Black and white does not simplify the image. It strips it down to its essence.
As I stood before these masks, I realized they are not meant to impress.
They remind us that a people remain alive as long as they continue to speak with their memory.
The Mask Festival of Porto Novo is far more than a cultural celebration. It is an open book where every dance becomes a page, every drumbeat becomes a sentence and every mask becomes a chapter written by the ancestors for those who are still to come.
When the final rhythm fades into silence, one truth remains.
In Benin, the spirits do not live only in stories.
They still walk among us.
Photographs and text by Jean Paul Frédy TOHOU shango ...
Black and white as the language of memory.
