The magazine of the photo-essay
July/August 2023 back issue
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film maker
Wilder Mann
the Image of the Savage
The transformation of man into beast is a central aspect of traditional pagan rituals
that are centuries old and which celebrate the seasonal cycle, fertility, life and death.
Each year, throughout Europe, from Scotland to Bulgaria, from Finland to Italy, from
Portugal to Greece via France, Switzerland and Germany, people literally put
themselves into the skin of the ‘savage’, in masquerades that stretch back centuries.
By becoming a bear, a goat, a stag or a wild boar, a man of straw, a devil or a
monster with jaws of steel, these people celebrate the cycle of life and of the
seasons. Their costumes, made of animal skins or of plants, and decorated with
bones, encircled with bells, and capped with horns or antlers, amaze us with their
extraordinary diversity and prodigious beauty.
Work on this project took photographer Charles Fréger to eighteen European
countries in search of the mythological figure of the Wild Man: Austria, Italy, Hungary,
Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Poland, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Macedonia, Bulgaria,
Czech Republic, Switzerland, Croatia, Finland, Romania and the United Kingdom.
by Charles Fréger
The Babugeri/Kukierzy from Bulgaria are part of an incredibly old ritual for midsummer.
Cerbul din Corlata, Romania.
Juantramposo, from the Basque country, is a masquerade performed only by single young
men and women.
The Schnappviecher (Italy) are winter demons, chased by a butcher who ritually kills some
of them in order to make space for springtime.
The Strohmann (Straw Man) of German rural mythology has been variously interpreted as a
Wild Man, a personification of lust and a symbol of winter.
