Teho Teardo, Music for Wilde Mann, Specula Records 2013

Charles Feger’s latest book Wilder Mann  is now in its second printing, so it is anything but a “limited edition” but I want it here on the Buffet to keep all of his other 15 books company. Not only is it a beautiful book about an amazing body of work, but now there is a music track available which was made specifically for the work. Often photographers talk about being inspired by music when photographing or working on their projects, this is a case of a musician composing an entire project inspired by images. The accomplished Italian composer and sound designer Teho Teardo has written 8 acoustic tracks inspired by the monsters in all of us.

“This
album carries a profoundly moving feeling mixing strings, guitars and
electronics, poignancy is the most evident feeling here. This music
erases the space between our safe technological lifestyle and the
monsters that live in territories as far as the eye can see. Savages
inherited from a pagan tradition that quickly find their way into our
own feelings.”  (Teho Teardo)

Charles spent several years traveling europe searching out groups of people which nurture historic pagan costume rituals.

“I
was going on an excursion within tribal Europe, the polar opposite of
our images of modern civilisations. I was entering into a territory
of landscapes as far as the eye can see. Wilder Mann was its
archetypal hero, half man half beast, a hairy monster, a
multi-faceted devil, a bloodthirsty or soft teddy bear, a fertile
caprine or a scapegoat wild boar.
I had envisioned an organic wild
man, hidden behind mud, grease, charcoal, the sculpted wood of his
horned mask, covered in leaves or dead animals, wearing his bells
noisily. I had already fantasised that he was like an animal
belonging to a pack of crouching bipeds: the essential model of a
zoomorphic figure, whose rudimentary appearance and ritualistic
attire would classify him as belonging to a form of universal
nudity”. (
Charles Fréger)

He is a portrait photographer who often poses the question of
what it means to belong to a group, to inhabit its history, to be
part of a circle. After photographing such groups of people as water
polo players, majorettes and sumo wrestlers, among many others,
this series focuses on the Wilder
Mann. 

Initially
inspired by the Krampus
in and around Salzburg in 2009, Fréger began a Europe-wide
exploration, in 18 countires, of similar rituals and cultural
traditions involving the pagan traditions linked to the beginning
and end of winter, the seasons, fertility, life and death. He has
chosen to focus his survey on the transformation of man into beast,
with interest in the mythology of the Wild
Man, a
cultural phenomenon which
goes
back many centuries and exists in many European countries to this
date.

The disc will be released in a few days with Specula Records.

You might find copies of the first printing of Wilder Mann, it is was printed in French by Thames and Hudson, auf Deutsch bei Kehrer, and English by Dewi Lewis.