Tovil: Exorcism & healing rites

Exorcism is part of a holistic approach to difficulties, which seeks to explore and treat individual disturbances and problems from several perspectives. Most importantly it is an approach that understands the physical condition of the body as inseparable from the mental. The exorcists 'adura' possess a vast knowledge which encompasses music, dance, poetry and painting as well as the construction of effigies and symbolic objects, which are all presented through the dramatic arts. Comedy plays an important cathartic role in the 'tovil' because it is by laughing that a patient shows he has recovered. This book, of which the photos were taken at a time which is now considered the golden age of modern Tovil, was born from a meeting between an Australian anthropologist and a French photographer-journalism.