A photographer is handed the job of raising the Baron from the dead

Each November the Gede, the spirits of the dead, assemble in the graveyards around Port-au-Prince. In November 1996 Phyllis Galembo was in a small public cemetery in the capital, where the graves had been weeded and whitewashed with chalk for the occasion, and the crowd was moving around the chief Gede, Bawon Samdi, mounted in the body of a respected priest named Sauveur St. Cyr. He invited her to a rite at his temple later. There he appeared as Gede, face powdered white below an undertaker’s top hat, cotton stuffed into his eye sockets and mouth. She had planned to photograph him lying on the floor. Instead her camera was taken away for safekeeping, and she was told her job was to stand over the body and lift it. She linked her little fingers with his, raised her arms and brought him up.