“The Sworn Virgins adapt their roles so perfectly, that over time, they are no longer recognised as women outside of their family. Over the years, the woman in them is lost.”
“It’s a man’s world” so we’re told, “but it would be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl”, continues the song made famous by James Brown and Betty Jean Newsome.
General society is evolving fast and the latter parts of this collective phrase are more pronounced than ever. However, it’s the first four words that echo in the minds of many, and are still often used independently. In many areas of the world and even in places one wouldn’t expect it, certain people’s perspectives and traditions struggle to escape core principles that are rich in a chauvinistic inclination.
In Northern Albania, in the Cursed Mountains, a place said to have been created by the devil himself, art and reportage award wining photographer Pepa Hristova, explores the tradition of the Sworn Virgins.
The Kannun is a collection of laws from the Middle Ages passed on for generations by word-of-mouth. It permits families to replace the male head of the household with a woman in the case of the patriarch’s death. With this new status comes the irrevocable vow that the woman chosen must preserve her virginity for the rest of her life. Adult women may swear this oath to take the place of the deceased father or brother. But even newborn girls can be declared sons and raised as boys for the purpose of providing the family with a male heir.
These so-called oath-virgins, or Burrnesha, not only receive the status of a man but also the rights and respect. They encompass the lifestyle of a man, doing a man’s work, while dressing and behaving like a man also. However, though they command the freedoms of a man in a social sense, they are sworn to celibacy and are abstinent sexually. Gaining a status celebrating the male gender’s superiority, they have to sacrifice not only their sexual identity but their sexual liberty. A sign of the strength in the written laws of a land, the disparity of social evolution and a people’s natural inclination to historical, social, psychological and biological traits or traditions.
Pepa Hristova’s Sworn Virgins is a revealing, visually perplexing and engaging series where an appropriate portrayal coincides with the convincing appearance of the subjects photographed. Socially insightful, it is an explorative piece into the human psyche and the obscurity of tradition, alarming and beautifully focused in its execution and communication.
“The Sworn Virgins adapt their roles so perfectly, that over time, they are no longer recognised as women outside of their family. Over the years, the woman in them is lost.”
By SGH Cheung