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NIC SHONFELD

Work In Progress Progression

  • Writer: Nic Shonfeld
    Nic Shonfeld
  • Oct 31
  • 5 min read

Updated: Nov 3

SYNOPSIS


This project centers around Chang, a 24-year-old pháp sư phù thủy — a sorcerer, or ‘spiritual magician’ — from the Thái ethnic minority in Yên Bái province, northern Vietnam. Through sustained, long-term collaboration, the work will explore the persistent survival of an ancestral spiritual practice within a rapidly modernising wider society, and how one young practitioner negotiates the tension between communal belief, personal responsibility, and the economic pressures shaping contemporary Vietnam. Rather than documenting ‘shamanism’ as an ethnographic subject, the project seeks to evoke its emotional atmosphere — the quiet labour, vulnerability, fatigue, and acts of caring responsibility that unfold beyond ritual ceremony.


The project builds on a decade of my engagement with minority communities in northern Vietnam, during which I have developed a substantial visual archive and close connections. Over the years, I have repeatedly been drawn to gestures and moments which reveal the intersection between spiritual realms and everyday life. This project continues that journey as a artistic inquiry shaped through observation and mutual trust.


Beginning January 2026, I will spend 6 months living in Chang’s village. His trajectory into ‘shamanism’ is unusual; without a family lineage of spiritual practitioners, he describes being “visited” in a sequence of “dreams” by his village’s original ancestral sorcerer. He was instructed to attend a ‘classroom’ — which he likens to a kind of shamanic university full of other students — where he has learned ritual chants, ancient Thái scriptures, and the making of traditional instruments used to beckon spirits. Now recognised as his village pháp sư phù thủy, he serves as an intermediary between the physical and ‘unseen’ worlds, performing ceremonies, offering counsel, conducting ‘spirit-possession’ rituals for villagers to communicate with departed family members, and performing ‘spirit-retrieval’ for those possessed by restless spirits. Unlike so many well documented shamanic rituals, there are no hallucinogenic substances used in Chang’s rituals.

Chang’s youth sets him apart, he shoulders responsibilities typically carried by much older practitioners. He often performs multiple ceremonies a day — both a spiritual duty and a source of income. Meanwhile, he navigates a complicated relationship with his father, a construction labourer who wishes him to have an “ordinary” life. Their dynamic reveals wider tensions: the pull of the city, the ‘migration’ of working-age villagers into urban labour (the ‘backbone’ of Vietnam’s industrious boom), and the erosion of certain cultural practices as economic necessity outpaces tradition.


During a visit with Chang, I witnessed a spirit-retrieval ritual during Tết Xíp Xí, a festival honouring ancestral protectors of children. Whilst dining with us, a young neighbour suddenly became possessed by the “angry” spirit of her grandfather. Her eyes were entranced, her body tensed, she sobbed, wailed and made snarling noises. Her mother and Chang guided her to his altar where he chanted, lit incense and offered votive gifts to appease the “grumpy grandpa”. 


As an observer, I am searching for rationale. Whether interpreted as psychological, spiritual, or performative, the experience was emotionally undeniable and hard to categorise, but it  was representative of how such emotionally real events are integral to, and deeply rooted in, ancient Thái culture. 


The work unfolds against a complex historical backdrop. Under pre-Đổi Mới (the 1989 economic ‘Renovation’) policies, spirit worship was banned, condemned as “unproductive superstition”, and at times violently suppressed; thousands from Chang’s village fled to the United States during the French colonisation and into the American war era. Spirit worship survived quietly.


This project is also profoundly personal. My early encounters with spirituality — a séance when I was ten revealed a hidden family tragedy; a spiritual artist who seemed to visually channel my late grandmother when I was eighteen — have left me with lasting questions about belief and the unseen. 


By focusing on Chang and his community, the work inadvertently reflects how photography can move beyond representation to evoke the intangible dimensions of human experience whilst contributing to contemporary discussions on cross-cultural artistic practice, ethics of representation, and the evolving role of spirituality in visual storytelling.


THE AIMS OF THE PROJECT


The goal of this project is not to survey or analyse ‘shamanic’ or cultural belief systems within Vietnam’s ethnic minority communities, nor to verify or challenge the concept of spirit possession and retrieval. Instead, by operating on lived experience and emotional atmosphere over ethnographic explanation, the work seeks to develop a nuanced approximation of Chang — a young shamanic sorcerer — his environment, and the people he supports through his practice.


Forming the basis of my first monograph, the project will comprise black-and-white 5×4 large-format portraits (location and ‘traditional’), still life details, landscape, and environmental and conversational video work. Together, these will explore the subtleties of Chang’s daily life: his ceremonial rituals, tools, periods of ‘recovery’, moments of solitude, and the spaces in which he finds reflection, his relationship with his ambivalent father. The project will also address the physical and spiritual landscape surrounding his village, juxtaposed with portraits of those he assists. I intend to photograph these individuals immediately after their transcendental or ‘possessed’ experiences, drawing together the visible and invisible dimensions of their realities.


While Vietnamese narratives promote cultural diversity, the lived realities of minority groups are often represented superficially, and deeper spiritual and communal practices remain largely unseen. International representations frequently repeat clichés such as picturesque rice terraces and smiling indigo-stained elders. Some photographers have been publicly criticised by Vietnamese scholars for such reductive approaches. In contrast, this project aims to create work that is intimate, grounded, and emotionally resonant, acknowledging the complexity of lived belief without reliance on spectacle or stereotype.


Ultimately, the project seeks to contribute a respectful and nuanced perspective on contemporary spiritual practice. By prioritising intimacy, observation, and trust, it aims to challenge reductive narratives and invite audiences to consider the intangible and ethical dimensions of belief as it is lived in present-day Vietnam.


THINGS I'VE BEEN READING AND WATCHING




Bibliography of Academic Research:


Fjelstad, Karen, and Nguyen Thi Hien, 2006, Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in Contemporary Vietnamese Communities. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications.


Malarney, Sean K. 2002, Culture, Ritual, and Revolution in Vietnam. New York: Routledge Curzon.


Nguyen Thi Hien, 2002, The Religion of Four Palaces: Mediumship and Therapy in Viet Culture. PhD Dissertation. Indiana University.


Norton, Barley, 2002, “The moon remembers Uncle Ho”: The politics of music and mediumship in northern Vietnam. British Journal of Ethnomusicology Vol 11, 69–98.


Taylor, Philip, 2004 Goddess on the Rise: Pilgrimage and Popular Religion in Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.


 
 
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