Man with scarification patterns, Congo, ca. 1900-1915

Black and white lantern slide showing a man with scarification designs on his chest, face and lips. Scarification was a common form of body modification in Africa that conveyed meaning on the body through the inflication and controlled healing of wounds to form particular marks. For men, this could often be a test of endurance, carry symbolic meaning or be a sign of cultural belonging. Christian missionaries disapproved of the practice, since it was believed to distort a natural body, made in God's image. During the 1800s and 1900, images of scarification were distributed in Europe, and came to be seen as a sign of the exotic. This slide comes from a collection generated by missionaries working for the Congo Balolo Mission, a mission begun in 1889 under the supervision of the East London Training Institute for Home and Foreign Missions that developed into the interdenominational evangelical mission Regions Beyond Missionary Union after 1900.