Ayahuasca (69)

The Banisteriopsis caapi vine is the main ingredient of the Ayahuasca brew. Ayahuasca means liana of the soul or spirit liana in the Quechua language. At the Takiwasi center in Peru, Doctor Jacques Mabit uses the Ayahuasca brew to heal people. © Hervé Merliac/Kaleidos images 

Ashura (101)

Every year, the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh draws worshippers from across the country to commemorate Ashura. The name comes from the Arabic "ashara" (ten) and designates the tenth day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. For Shia Muslims, this day recalls the massacre of Imam Hussein, his family and his companions at Karbala on 10 October 680 by the troops of the Umayyad caliph Yazid I. In Nabatieh, often nicknamed "the city of Imam Hussein", the ritual takes the form of the darb, a procession in which many participants shed their own blood through self-flagellation, a practice kept up in few places in Lebanon. This photo essay documents it in detail. 

Chinese New Year in Paris (78)

Chinese New Year opens the year of the Chinese calendar, a lunisolar calendar. Its date varies each year between January 21 and February 20, and the festivities last fifteen days. The first day most often corresponds to the second new moon after the winter solstice; an intercalary month, added every two to three years, aligns the lunar calendar with the solar year. The festival is celebrated wherever Chinese, Vietnamese or other Asian diasporas live. In Paris, Belleville and above all the 13th arrondissement host lion and dragon dances, drum floats and stalls selling culinary specialties. In the late afternoon, firecrackers are lit to drive away evil spirits. 

Haïti lumières (77)

 

Lebanese demonstration in Paris (35)

One of many demonstrations by Lebanese expats in Paris against the governmental corruption in Lebanon and for a secular state. October 27, 2019. © Tarek Charara/Kaleidos images 

Public transportation (38)

A personal vision of public transportations by Marie-Geneviève Burguière. 

Saving the Iris Cedreti (56)

Iris cedreti Dinsmore belongs to the Oncocyclus irises, a group of "royal irises" endemic to the Near East and known since antiquity. It grows in the wild on one stretch of the Mount Lebanon range, between 1,200 and 2,000 metres, alongside three other irises found nowhere else but Lebanon. Its single-bloom-per-stem flower stands out for a near-white background entirely veined in dark purple to black, unlike the more evenly coloured garden irises. Growing from a short rhizome rather than a bulb, it goes dormant through summer before flowering again in May. Listed as critically endangered by the IUCN, more than half of its habitat is threatened by the Cedrar project. Doctor Youssef Tawk has spent years working to save it. 

The horsemen of Djougou (399)

Legend has it that in the seventh century a group of horsemen fled the Islamization of Mecca and, over the centuries, found themselves in Africa. They took with them their equestrian traditions and their love for horses. © Tarek Charara/Kaleidos images