“Tribal Voodoo Witch”

“Tribal Voodoo Witch”

A vile poison potion fills her satanic gourd to the brim. With a dead sacrificial chicken in sooty grip, Mchawi prepares for a night of nefarious black magic witchery. Her sinister name roughly translates as “occult sorceress” in her native Swahili language and perfectly depicts her wickedly macabre schemes of demonic intent.

Southeast Asia's most famous stylist, Hilde Marie Johansen, crafted a crown of chicken feathers and draped a tribal grass skirt around the model’s face to create scary witch hair. Then with fiendish flare, Hilde twisted an animal tooth necklace across the model’s face for a diabolical expression. The skirt was made by tattering a strip of burlap that had been soaked in espresso coffee for a more authentic color rendition and then dried in the sun for a day. A cluster of cinnamon sticks detailed the front of the skirt. That morning at sunrise I had visited the local outdoor market to acquire a fully feathered fresh dead chicken.

Kenyan Model: The inimitable, AKINYI.

From my Tribal Wild Collection featuring body-painted, untamed models photographed in my Bangkok studio.