The Ritual
Tobias Nicolai
2024 — Denmark
About this series
Cinnamon is often associated with the month of Christmas, but in Jutland it is cinnamon season all year round. The time for rituals is not over, and it is not uncommon to stroll down the street and spot the strange signs that a very special ritual has taken place: huge orange-brown stains up and down the trunk of lonely trees, remains of duct tape at the base of lampposts and two bare spots where the victim’s feet have been planted.
The Cinnamon party is a rite of passage that marks the beginning of a new phase of life. According to tradition, a woman is called a cinnamon maid, and a man a cinnamon fellow, if they have not married before turning 25 years of age. The victim is most often ‘caught’ and tied up and fitted with glasses and a mask to protect them from the worst of the ingestion of the enormous amounts of cinnamon that they are showered with in more or less creative ways. The tradition is mainly practiced in mainland Jutland.
Photographer: Tobias Nicolai
Nationality: Danish
Based in: Aarhus, Denmark
Website: www.tobiasnicolai.com
Instagram: @tobiasnicolai
Tobias Nicolai (b. 1987) is a Danish photographer based in Aarhus. He holds a BA in media studies from Aarhus University and most recently a BA in photojournalism from the Danish School of Media and Journalism. When not photographing the people closest to him or things he happens to stumble upon, Tobias Nicolai earns a living doing mainly editorial work for a wide range of both Danish and international clients.
He was born and raised in the outskirts of Denmark on an island in the most southern part of the country, and his larger personal projects all gravitate towards that sense of place either physically and thematically.
Tobias is drawn to the details and aesthetics of the things we think we know and has a never-ending fascination towards the exoticness found in his vicinity. He likes to make the bizarre look normal and the normal look bizarre. His photography practice is driven by curiosity with the underlying ambition to highlight the extraordinary in the everyday and mundane.