XII: Talismans, Critical Dictionary
‘Man released from the talisman does not exist, in a manner of speaking.’
‘The gods are dead, but the talismans remain. They have survived all forms of incredulity and in doing it revealed their own eternal vitality. The man whose only faith is in the speed of his motor car or aeroplane, and who marches on death as toward a black chasm in which he will be engulfed and every last shred of his personality destroyed for ever, hangs a doll on his vehicle as the patriarchs of Israel or Assur hung teraphim on the skins covering their tents. Times have changed in nothing, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. This is a kind of benign sorcery to which each one abandons himself, even though his mental culture has demonstrated the absurdity of it to him. So does humanity show its weakness and the talisman its strength and its occult power is manifested in the fact that men have not been able to get free of it.’
In 2015, I set up a large format camera, with two bellows extensions, & powerful flash units to create macro photographs of Filipino anting-antings, or talismans. I encountered technical challenges that the digital camera, terms such as reciprocity failure and bellows extension compensation, has long disregarded— technicalities of shooting macro on large format.
I wanted to photograph the anting-antings in a way that would better recognise the images they once sought to represent. These talismans were created through the process of lost wax casting, which, over the years of use, has caused them to lose their sharpness, leaving us with traces of the original images—Filipino interpretations of Catholic imagery brought by the colonizers.
On the anting-antings, the late Filipino polymath Floy Quintos has said, “Time and colonisation forces us to hide sacred things in our culture, and secrecy itself becomes something sacred.”
Anting-anting, or agimat, as they are locally known, are medallions made of brass, worn or kept close to the body. They are meant to provide the bearer protection, luck, and mystical powers. They represent a system of Filipino beliefs that combine pre-colonial animism, Catholic doctrines, as well as cabalistic and masonic traditions. During the colonial period, many peasants carried them in fervent belief that their mystical properties would give them power. Today, it is still carried or worn by the military, the police, and members of secret cults.
The amulets incorporate images of Catholic iconographies and a combination of Tagalog and pig Latin inscriptions. Recognising the iconographies, I attempted to find their source by visiting (and talking my way into) the Warburg Institute and its library of iconographic images. Here I found Madonna Lactans, or Mary breastfeeding Jesus, an iconographic image dating back to (at least) the 12th century.
