Vodou Brooklyn

Stephanie Keith met a Vodou priest at a Buddhist interfaith event in New York. He invited her to photograph and experience the religious world of his Haitian culture. Ten ceremonies later, she offers her images and reflections on these late-night rituals.

Produced by Trent Gilliss and Mitch Hanley

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We must all pray to Papa Legba. He is the gatekeeper, the met Carfour. Pray to him -- it really works!!

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This is done all the time: Peking becomes Beijing, Bombay becomes Mumbai. Language (and spelling) change - unless you want to stick to the throwback of thou and yore.

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"Perversions" is a strong term when we are really discussing transliterations from Sanksrit, Arabic, or whatever into the Latin alphabet. The exact spelling is open to interpretation by the scholars involved but once it is established in a language, let's not keep re-visiting it every time some new know-it-all wants to assert their moral superiority over the previous generation.

Undoubtedly there are plenty of English words that get mangled upon entry into other languages. We just don't get our grass skirts in a bunch over it. Loosen the bone, and get back to witch doctoring. We will try our best (we consider this our "white man's burden") to properly transliterate your words into the Roman alphabet. If we screw up, let us know now, not in 50, 100, or 200 years.

Straight talk from Sid

P.S. - if you use our calendar system, please abide by the proper B.C. and A.D. date system. "B.C.E." & "C.E." are hokey modernisms that bow to political correctness whilst still curiously embracing the Christian calendar. If using B.C. and A.D. is painful for you, come up with your own date system based upon the reign of Atahualpa or whatever.

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The terms used in english are really perversions of the actual names, so I think it's pretty ridiculous to mock people for spelling things the correct way. And where are you people from? Moslems? Hindoos? Do you have any idea what century it is? Sorry that the good old days of imperialism are over, when people like you could don their pith helmets and quash these "lesser" religions. Oh, and the book The Rainbow and the Serpant is a really interesting way to explore Voudon. It's written like a novel but it's the true story of a Harvard ethnobiolgist in Haiti.