A selection of incredible portraits from photographer Charles Fréger’s collection and book Wilder Mann, documenting the ancient pagan rites still being practiced throughout Europe today.
From the New York Times Lens blog:
About 10,000 years ago, humans began domesticating wild animals for both food and companionship. Over the course of centuries, animal species were bred for traits that made them docile and more useful to their masters. But as humans changed and fenced in animals, they were also domesticating themselves. The skills needed to survive in the wild were different than those needed to succeed in more complex social arrangements.Mr Fréger was intrigued by the transformations of human being to beast that he witnessed in 18 European countries. They were, he said, celebrations of fertility, life and death and symbolized the complicated relationship between mankind and nature.
I LOVE THESE SO MUCH
These are like a weird nightmare.
(via faggot-interrupted)
I.
When I think of your heart, I think of a snakebite to
the chest.
II.
Uncountable lifetimes ago there was an empire in
Egypt. We burned the libraries. We destroyed the
temples. Everything that was beautiful then is lost
to us now.
III.
These days, poetry is the only language I know how
to speak. But you speak anthropology. You speak
hieroglyphs. You spend your life studying things I
only bury in metaphors.
IV.
When I think of my heart, I think of stone tombs.
V.
Last year, they found Cleopatra’s palace sunk deep
in the Mediterranean sea. But anything they could
learn from the ruins of her home is not worth empty-
ing oceans for.
