This series is a selection of images from a photo essay I prepared during January of this year, which marked the 10 year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti. It is a memorial with a difference: rather than focusing on past destruction, it focuses on aspects of life as currently lived in Haiti today. The project aims to push back on representations of Haitians as quintessential victims, or racialized-sensationalized news items: it applies an artistic lens to a documentary topic. Publication is expected in the Columbia Journal at the end of April, with an accompanying long-form essay.
Over the past two years I have been photographing a documentary-art series in Haiti. In January, the month that marked the 10 year memorial of the devastating earthquake of 2010 that hit the capital, Port-au-Prince, I spent three weeks travelling around the country with a Haitian journalist, Junior St Vil. We wanted to create a photo-memorial with a difference: one that commemorates the lives lost by focusing on aspects of life as lived in Haiti today. More importantly, we wanted to push back on visual representations of Haitians as quintessential victims, while not denying the realities they regularly face.
Two experiences guided the selection of images in this series: one was the sense of familiarity I felt each time I visited Haiti since the first time I went there. A familiarity with what I saw, with the words I heard when talking to people: reactions given to both challenges and successes in human lives. I knew those reactions, from the stories of my own family and my own people: Hungarians, Jews, refugees, people living through wars and dictatorship. The differences were eventualities of historical time and geographic location, the essence was familiar.
The other guiding principle were the words I heard from Haitians themselves, people who told me that images presented about them in the US press or in non-profit advertising were isolated stills of their lives, one that tells a factual, but largely agenda-driven story.
The images in this photo-essay aim to tell a story that complements the news. It tells the story of a place where heroism lies in everyday struggles, in the strength of the human spirit, in resilience. It tells a story of our ability to withstand acts of violence, pettiness and hate committed not only by larger power structures but also by fellow human beings, living across the street from us.
A story of black lives, Haitian lives, our lives.
The full series can be viewed at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPS1umCk