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Pregnant woman from the shack of a voudun practitioner
Advertisements from the shack of a voudun practitioner Acrylic on wood Anan Antoine, c.1990s RRa0022 / 750000i Wellcome Library
Until August 2010, these advertisements for voudun health services stood alongside stalls selling vegetables, clothes and electronic gadgets in a busy African marketplace. Salvaged from the outer walls of a shack in the Benin town of Adjarra, all six graphic panels dwell less on the results of the prof- fered cures and more on the afflictions themselves.
— 70 —
The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection, that it is not
easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but
propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, Whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions…