Henning Christoph

Biography

Henning Christoph was born in Grimma, Germany in 1944.  He went on to study Ethnology and Journalism in Washington, D.C.  To avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, Christoph moved to Essen, Germany to study photography. 

In 1969, Christoph traveled to Northern Ireland to cover outbreaks of fighting between the Catholics and Protestants.  Even though he escaped the war in the Far East, he found one in Ireland.  "It was here that I experienced my own personal Vietnam," said Christoph about how dangerous it was being so close to the IRA.  He spent nearly ten years there and put together his first book "Ireland, oh Ireland," published in 1978."

Henning Christoph has been the author of 28 photo essays in Geo magazine since 1976.  Six of them have won World Press awards.  In 1993, He traveled to Mongolia to report on the country after it broke away from the Soviet Union.  In specific, he wanted to document the nomadic people who were final able to recognize their religious roots of Buddhism and Shamanism.

During the 1990's, Christoph began his work in Africa.  What started as merely a report about Benin, became an all encompassing study on animism.  In 1995, his book "Voodoo - Secret Power in Africa" was published.  In this work, Christoph intended to prove the Voodoo isn't native to the Caribbean, but Benin rather.  Furthermore, he put down the common notion of Voodoo as "hocus pocus" and proved its religious concepts on film.

Henning Christoph has been working on his new project called "The Soul of Afrika" since 1994 to delve even deeper into the roots of African spiritualism.