Photographer: Ceurvorst, Joë.
Title: untitled (Danses rituelles chez les Basalampasu).
Date: 1959.
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Medium: mounted gelatin silver print.
Size: 24,4 x 18,1 cm (image 16,5 x 16,4 cm).
Condition: very good.
Reference: JCV0521/1.
Provenance: French collection.
Extra: typed note with identification in French and Dutch on verso. Congopresse 31.406/502.
Ritual Dance among the Basalampasu (Salampasu, Basala Mpasu).
The Basala Mpasu (Salampasu, meaning grasshopper wings) are named for the tattoos in the shape of grasshopper wings that adorn their foreheads. The Basala Mpasu are found west of the Lulua River.
Joë Ceurvorst was a Belgian illustrator/reporter, whose drawings appeared in Spirou magazine and its Flemish edition Robbedoes during the period 1939-1946. 
Joë Ceurvorst had an adventurous early life. He worked on a ranch in the Canadian Rocky Mountains when he was called back to Europe for his military service during World War I. Back in civilian life, he traveled through Africa, before returning to America and beginning his career in journalism. He came back to Europe in 1939, and started a collaboration with the publishing house Dupuis. 
In the second half of the 1940s, Ceurvorst was a journalist for Le Moustique and its Dutch-language edition Humoradio, writing reports about parts unknown, like the Far West or the Canadian Inuit population, as well as adventurous subjects like gliders and other scientific innovations. In 1949 and 1950, Ceurvorst undertook an expedition through the African continent in his Willys MB jeep, which he nicknamed "Mosquito". He was accompanied by his relative and secretary Jane Barbier and a dog called Pelish. He left on 1 May 1949, driving his jeep from Brussels to Marseille, from where he embarked for Algeria. On the African continent, he crossed the Sahara, the jungle regions of the Congo and the equatorial area, ending his adventurous trip in Usumbura (present-day Bujumbra) at Lake Tanganyika. The return trip went through the immense valley of the Nile to Alexandria. Almost a year since his departure, and after a journey of 35,000 kilometers (22,000 miles), he returned his jeep to the streets of Brussels.
Starting in April 1951, Ceurvorst's adventurous journey was chronicled in Le Moustique/Humoradio, Later, it was also collected in book format under the title 'L'Afrique en Jeep: Sahara-Niger-Congo-Nil-35.000 Km' (Hatier-Boivin, 1952). An English translation by Marvyn Savil called 'Africa in a Jeep' was published in 1956 by Staples Press. During the 1960s, Ceurvorst was additionally a translator of international novels for the publishing house Marabout, which included a new edition of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus' (1964).
Ceurvorst spent his later years in Belgian Congo (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo), working for the Info-Congo agency. In 1956, by request of the Office of Information and Public Relations for Belgian Congo, Ceurvorst crossed another 10,000 kilometers through Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi. His mission was creating a written and visual documentary of the region, appearing in episodes in the newspaper La Dernière Heure. On 3 February 1959, the newspaper Le Soir mentioned that the Belgian Colonial Press Association had formed a board, with Joe Ceurvorst serving as secretary general. His further whereabouts are unknown.