Lifestyle
A Miami photo exhibit dispels myths about Haitian-American religious traditions
Photographer Woosler Delisfort documents ceremonies from vodou, ifa and santeria traditions actively practiced today
Woosler Delisfort
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Woosler Delisfort
Haitian-Americans have become the targets of disinformation and even hate this political season. Some of this is based on long-standing stereotypes and misunderstanding of their religious beliefs and spiritual practices.
A photo exhibition recently opened in Miami tries to shed some light on faith practices and ceremonies among Haitian-Americans and others that have connections to the Caribbean and Africa. The show, featuring work by photographer Woosler Delisfort, documents some of Miami’s vodou traditions.
The exhibition, “Sanctuary: Our Sacred Place” at HistoryMiami Museum showcases traditions actively practiced by communities throughout South Florida. Delisfort, a Haitian-American photographer who grew up in Little Haiti and was raised Catholic, became fascinated by the many ways people in his community expressed their spirituality. He says, “This is part of my culture. This is part of my tradition.”
Many of the nearly 150 photos in the exhibition focus on ceremonies from vodou, santeria and ifa traditions that have their origins among West Africa’s Yoruba people. All the images were captured in south Florida. He says, “There’s vodou ceremonies happening in Miami Shores, Pembroke Pines, West Miramar, the different places where you never would have thought… there’s ceremonies happening over here.”
Mambos, or priestesses in the vodou tradition circle a central post, a poto mitan
Woosler Delisfort
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Woosler Delisfort
In the gallery, one of Delisfort’s photos is of a vodou ceremony he attended in the backyard of a home in a Ft. Lauderdale suburb. A dozen women circle a decorated post called a poto mitan. “Most of these women are mambos,” he says. A mambo is a priestess in the vodou tradition. The poto mitan, Delisfort says, “is the charge between, the connection between the earthly world and… the ancestor world.”
Photographer Woosler Delisfort says for some Haitian-Americans, “Vodou is a way of life.”
Greg Allen, NPR
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Greg Allen, NPR
Delisfort says he was always was aware of vodou growing up and had friends and family who took part in its ceremonies and traditions. It’s about spirituality, he says but also about culture. Many who practice vodou he says, are observing Catholics or members of other Christian faiths. “At the end of the day,” he says, “vodou is a way of life. And that’s how most people view it. It’s a way of life.”
An altar, crafted by artist Michelle Murray, pays homage to the orisha, Yemaya
Greg Allen, NPR
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Greg Allen, NPR
An altar from the Yoruba ifa tradition is part of the exhibition. It’s covered with sea shells, fruit, flowers and other offerings to Yemaya, an orisha or divine spirit who’s considered the mother and embodies the oceans. It was created by Michelle Murray, a choreographer and ifa practitioner. She says there’s a lot of misunderstanding surrounding ifa, vodou and santeria. “People make it seem magical and mystical and demonized,” she says. “What we’re actually doing is taking care of the Earth and honoring all that comes with that.”
Another part of the exhibition documents a ceremony held on a Miami beach on Juneteenth every year at dawn. The show’s curator, Marie Vickles says practitioners of vodou, ifa and other faiths come together to send out on the water an offering of fruits, vegetables and flowers laid on a flotilla of palm fronds. Vickles says, “As it goes out, it’s meant to commemorate those who did not survive the middle passage, who were lost to the waters.” She says it also honors “those that made it and were able to create a new life here.”
A Catholic San Lazaro Day procession in Hialeah, Florida
Woosler Delisfort
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Woosler Delisfort
Other faiths and religious practices documented in Delisfort’s exhibition include Catholic San Lazaro Day and Ethiopian Orthodox Holy Week ceremonies, Santeria practices and Day of the Dead altars. They’re ceremonies not always open to outsiders. Delisfort spent years building relationships with religious leaders and practitioners and collaborated with them in this exhibition. Vickles says, “This is a project that not only celebrates spiritual practice, but also is documenting it for history, for the future. So, people can look back and say, ‘Oh, this existed in Miami,’ and hopefully still exists.”
Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.
Kate Green/Getty Images
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Kate Green/Getty Images
Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.
Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.
But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”
The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.
Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.
“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
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Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
Interview highlights
On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies
I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …
The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.
On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up
I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.
On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance
I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.
On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant
I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.
Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.
I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.
On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works
I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Bruce Campbell
I’m Battling Cancer
Published
Bruce Campbell has revealed he has cancer, but says it’s a type that’s treatable, though not curable.
“The Evil Dead” actor shared the news Monday in a message to fans, writing, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that — I’m having one of those.” He continued, “It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock — it was to me too.”
Campbell said he wouldn’t go into further detail about his diagnosis, but explained his work schedule will be changing. “Appearances and cons and work in general need to take back seat to treatment,” he wrote, adding he plans to focus on getting “as well as I possibly can over the summer.”
As a result, Campbell says he has to cancel several convention appearances this summer, noting, “Treatment needs and professional obligations don’t always go hand-in-hand.”
He says his plan is to tour this fall in support of his new film, “Ernie & Emma,” which he stars in and directs.
Ending on a determined note, Campbell told fans, “I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch … and I expect to be around a while.”
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
Paramount Pictures
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Paramount Pictures
The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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