Description
Mihaela Minca is the most powerful witch of Romania. The profession has a tradition in Mihaela’s family, her mother and grandmother were witches already. Today she runs a flourishing international business together with her daughters and her daughter-in-law: From love spells to curses the witches have everything on offer, they receive inquiries from all over the world via the Internet. Nevertheless, magic and predicting the future is not only the profession of these women. They are not a mere business, not a staging. Here, in this Roma family and their closely knit community in Southeastern Europe, magic and mysticism are a natural part of life. The witches’ craft is also an expression of female strength within an everyday culture shaped by men. For “Daughters of Magic” Johanna-Maria Fritz accompanied Mihaela Minca and her family for a year and a half and captured the lives of these modern witches in sensitive, yet powerful images.
About the photographer
Johanna-Maria Fritz, (*1994), after studying photography at the Ostkreuzschule, she became a junior-member of the OSTKREUZ agency in 2019. 2012–2016 assistent to Daniel Josefsohn, 2017 Inge Morath Award, 2019 Deutscher Friedenspreis für Fotografie, exhibitions nationally and internationally, lives in Berlin (rarely) when she is not on the road (often) and works internationally (almost always).
Exhibition
As part of the exhibition CONTINENT – In Search of Europe OSTKREUZ–Agentur der Fotografen, Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, Berlin, October 2, 2020 – January 10, 2021
