Film Screening: Atis Rezistans, The Sculptors of the Grand Rue

As you all know, the excitement and optimism of the Port au Prince Ghetto Biennale was crumbled into ruins only weeks later by the terrible earthquakes in Haiti. One of the Grand Rue artists was killed, and the rest are struggling to find tents, feed their families, and protect a decade's worth of their prolific artistic output. MY previous blog posts on the Grand Rue are HERE.

Atis Rezistans: The Sculptors of the Grand Rue

Artist André Eugene came out of Haiti a few weeks ago and will be in New York briefly this week. At last-minute notice the 16 Beaver Group is kindly hosting a screening of Leah Gordon's short documentary on the sculptors of the Grand Rue: this Thursday, March 18th at 7:30 PM. 16 Beaver Group is at 16 Beaver Street in Manhattan.

 

Appearing will be:

Andre Eugene, discussing his work, the Grand Rue community, and the current situation in Haiti.

Laura Heyman, discussing her fabulous large format photography project from the Biennale.

Myself, doing my best to fill in any gaps in translation for Andre Eugene, although my kreyol is fairly rudimentary. I will also comment on my experience visiting the Biennale.

In case you have benefit fatigue, this is FREE and open to the public.

PLEASE JOIN US!

MORE Information HERE, from Pedro Lasch, who organized this event.

The Ghetto Biennale on PRI's "The World"

I'm assured that tomorrow, on Christmas day, my report on Port-au-Prince's recent Ghetto Biennale will air on PRI's The World. If in the United States check your local NPR affiliate station for showtimes HERE. For all you international listeners, the story will post to the PRI website on Monday, the 28th. I'll put a link up then.

 

In the meanwhile, they've already posted a Flickr set of my photographs from the trip, along with the almost oppressive suggestion that you visit this very same blog to "see more about the Biennale." Why oppressive? In addition to working on the piece for The World, I spent much of the last ten days writing stories about the event for the Suddeutsche Zeitung, the Times of London, the Miami Herald and the BBC's From our own Correspondent. Keeping all of these stories fresh and different has been enough of a challenge without more blogging on top of it.

Nonetheless, for those of you visiting from The World's link, antarcticiana refuses to disappoint, so here are a few more images from my recent trip to Haiti, where I was hanging out on the Grand Rue with a group of sculptors who make amazing vodou-assemblage art out of the discarded refuse of western civilization.

A detail from an André Eugene sculpture of a "Gede," installed right on the curb of the Grand Rue, along the Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The entire figure is about seven feet tall, with a ribcage welded together out of rebar. As I understand it, Gedes are a tribe of spirits representing the ancestors. One of the foremost among them is Bawon Samedi, literally "Baron Saturday," who is feted at the beginning of November with a vodou ceremony clearly correspondent with the Christian All Saints Day. I've blogged about the annual Gede festivity at Tap-Tap in Miami, before. The Gedes manifest a beguiling combination of sexuality and death, which Eugene explained to me in terms of a yin-yang duality he says permeates vodou. The Baron's voracious sexual appetite, he said, represents life, through procreation; but wherever life is present, so too is its opposite, death. The head of this sculpture is an actual human skull. Eugene says these occasionally wash out of the cemetery up the hill, appearing in the streets during violent storms, but they are so prevalent in the work of the Grand Rue artists that something more than hurricanes must be at work. I suspect locals now collect them and pass them along for a finder's fee.

 

A "Tap-tap," or public bus, sporting a mural of "Sweet Mickey," a popular konpa band based out of Petionville, the rich suburb in the hills above Port-au-Prince. Konpa (compas) is the dominant dance music of Haiti, a slow lilting groove something like a francophone version of salsa, danced "kole-kole," meaning "stuck together." Religious imagery is at least as popular a motif as pop-culture, with a special fondness for the "Jesus is my shepherd" theme as in this image on the back of the Tap-tap, below.

 

 

As part of a film crew I once made the long and kidney-churning drive to Canje, in Haiti's remote Central Plateau, to interview Paul Farmer, secular saint and subject of the Tracy Kidder biography Mountains Beyond Mountains. Farmer explained Haiti as "9,000,000 Africans kidnapped and dumped in the middle of the Caribbean with no way to get home." In the traditions of vodou and even in iconography such as that on this Tap-tap, which reads simply "Black Africa," that heritage is still very much alive, evident and celebrated. A visitor arriving to Haiti after being blindfolded and put on a plane could easily imagine that they had been transported to Senegal or Côte D'Ivoire, rather than to one of the Antilles.

 

But the old connections of the colonial Caribbean are equally strong. One evening, hearing a brass band playing, I wandered out of the gates of the famous and fabulous Oloffsson Hotel, which fifty years ago served as the setting for Graham Greene's The Comedians. I followed the sound to an outdoor basketball court down the road, where these musicians were practicing for carnival. The ensemble included only drums, an array of horns, and voices. Robert Peterson, the sound artist mentioned in the radio piece I did for PRI's "The World," joined me. Originally from Louisiana, he was bowled over by the similarity between this Haitian carnival music and the brass bands of New Orleans. Before the Haitian revolution and the Louisiana purchase, Port-au-Prince and New Orleans were of course sister cities in the French colonial enterprise.

On another occasion, sitting on the veranda, we heard more passing musicians. After just the very first few notes, Robert blurted out "that's funeral music." He told me that before coming to the Ghetto Biennale the farthest he had been from home was a trip to the Canadian side of the Niagara falls, but he took to Haiti immediately, wandering about with his digital recorder in a kind of exploratory ecstasy.

In the age of jet-travel and US hegemony the old trade routes that linked the great ports of the Caribbean basin have faded in our collective memory. Uncovering evidence of them is always exciting.

 

Much as this looks like another assemblage by the sculptors of the Grand Rue, this is a ritual space, the vodou equivalent of a shrine or altar, outside in the yard at the home of the local vodou priest. There are likely cauldrons, repositories of spirits called by the priest to do "work" on behalf of practitioners, buried in the ground beneath this installation. In Cuba I saw bundles almost identical to this thread-wrapped ball, in similar environments. The bundle most probably contains symbolic objects collected together by the client at the behest of the spirit, speaking through the priest. If the client wishes to ensure the faithfulness of his lover, for instance, the bundle might contain a lock of her hair, a photograph, or a stolen swatch of fabric from her clothing. The Hollywood stereotype of the "voodoo doll" probably originates from a mis-characterization of this sort of symbolic substitution of part for whole.

 

All kinds of cast-off material are incorporated into the work being made on the Grand Rue. These stick figures, with heads taken from the discarded dolls of North America, are wound around and around and around with lengths of cassette tape, mummified in music.

 

Another Grand Rue creation, a sort of Haitian Carmen Miranda, with a headdress made from 7up, Guiness and Prestige Beer bottle caps.

Tragedy in the Grand Rue

It seems almost impossible to contemplate that only two months ago I was in Haiti to write about the Ghetto Biennale, an international art event whose very existence I interpreted as representing a moment of comparative optimism for the country. My various blog postings on that brilliant spectacle, with links to some of the media outlets I covered the story for, are HERE.

The Grand Rue was exactly the kind of neighborhood worst hit by Haiti's ongoing series of earthquakes, a place dense with shoddy cinderblock construction, wholly ignorant of building codes. Building after building sprouted ersatz bits and extensions, tacked on into a dense cement patchwork, to house expanding families and country people driven to the city by the neo-liberal plan's near-total undermining of the agricultural sector. It was a claustrophic experience to walk this warren of nerve-wracking construction even without the most distant thought of hurricane or earthquake in one's mind.

BEFORE photo: Chantal Regnault

Is it good news, or bad news, that "only" one of the four Grand Rue artists was killed last week? Louco, whose portrait is just visible atop the right-hand column of this inviting entryway to the Ghetto Biennale, perished. May he rest in peace.

AFTER photo: Leah Gordon

Reading: Imajine by Claudel Casseus

In Port au Prince, before the earthquake, living on the brink of disaster was the status quo for countless Haitians. Now, almost fifteen months after the disaster, life among the ruins is the new normal. The media tells us that half of the 1.5 million people made homeless have now returned to their former homes, or have found new ones, but wherever we drove in the capital last month it seemed that every vacant lot and public space was still crammed with tent cities. No major roads remained blocked with rubble, but I saw many buildings in a state of near-collapse, tilted and slanted, their poorly engineered concrete slabs jutting into the sky at all angles. They look, these former buildings, as if the earthquake had only happened last week.

Not so the tent cities, which are developing a sense of permanence. The once grand, open expanse of the Champ de Mars, directly in front of the as-yet still undemolished, collapsed and impotent national palace, is full of tents, some now with reinforced walls of plywood and metal. It looks as if every last rusted tin corrugation, ersatz television antenna, tattered blue polytarp and urine-stained alleyway of a Rio de Janeiro favela had been teleported here and dropped in front of the equivalent of the White House. This is no longer a refugee camp, it is a community, complete with restaurants, bars in which to gather and watch television, hair salons, hookers, fried plantain salesmen, midwives, neighbors and hoodlums. It is all too easy to imagine that unless presented with a pleasant alternative, nobody is going nowhere no time soon. At the moment neither options pleasant nor unpleasant seem to be presenting themselves, despite the hundreds (thousands?) of NGOs that have flooded the city with housing schemes, feasibility studies, risk assessments and white SUVs.

It is an unfulfilled cliché of development and aid work that the population being aided should, for best results, be consulted, involved in the process and invited to help shape its own destiny. But a recent literary project showcases, for me, just how rare it is for a Haitian perspective on the earthquake to take center stage. Imajine, by Claudel Casseus, is not a prescription for relief or reconstruction, it is a personal narrative of how one Haitian man experienced the earthquake and its aftermath. Reading it makes one realize that our comprehension of what the quake was like is based on images, and on a few quotes from traumatized citizens collected and selected by foreign reporters in the days immediately following the catastrophe. It showcases, by extension, the limitations of the very narrow lens through which we view most international events, despite the potential of the internet to bring us direct reports from those affected.

Imajine is essentially a work-for-hire, produced, enabled and published by conceptual artist and musician Bill Drummond. But the words in it are those of Claudel Casseus, perhaps a typical underemployed, eager, brilliant and sometimes desperate Haitian young man. There are many like him in Port au Prince, people with vast unrealized potential, their creative possibilities and dreams squelched by racism, borders, corruption, politics and poverty. Nobody else, however, could have written Imajine.

As a participant in the December 2009 Ghetto Biennale, Bill Drummond painted the provocative and uncomfortably prescient slogan "imagine you wake up tomorrow and music has disappeared" on a wall in the Grand Rue of Port-au-Prince. Claudel Casseus steadied the ladder for him. In the days after the earthquake, less than a month after the triumphant finale of the biennale, participating artists, now back at their homes all over the globe, set up a master list and an email network to exchange news and reports of how their newly made Haitian friends and collaborators had fared in the earthquake. Nobody knew anything of Casseus' whereabouts, nor what might have happened to him.

"Imagine you wake up tomorrow and music has disappeared."

Some two weeks later Bill Drummond's cellphone rang. Through the electronic fog he recognized Casseus' voice, but the connection was too bad and the language barrier too great for him to understand much more than the simple fact that his former ladder-holder was alive. He wondered how he could help, for surely that transatlantic telephone call represented a request for assistance. Drummond's answer to this question continues to elude many of the NGOs working in Port-au-Prince, despite its simplicity: if you want to help a Haitian in this nightmarish time, give him or her a job. Drummond proposed a work-for-hire, commissioning Casseus to write a five-thousand word account of how he had experienced the earthquake. Imajine is the result of Casseus seizing this opportunity by the horns; he spent countless hours in an internet café pouring out his memories in emails to Drummond. Ultimately, his account ran to some sixty pages.

The Grand Rue on runoff election day, March 20th.

Casseus' descriptions of the psychological effects of the earthquake demonstrate the shortcomings of journalistic accounts, so often written by observers arriving on the scene after a catastrophe has already occurred. I remember reading in various stories that Haitians were traumatized and that many "refused to set foot in any building," and that this was complicating efforts to get people to return to their homes, but I didn't really understand the emotional depth of their sentiment until I read Casseus: "It was impossible to walk by a collapsed building without having the illusion that there might be someone under the rubble screaming for help. Sometimes it might be true and sometimes it might be just a vision that got stuck in your head. If you walked by a building, you can't help but think it is about to fall down on you or that you could have been dead under there if it wasn't for the grace of God and the Spirits."

The power of Imajine lies in the raw, unpolished delivery of Casseus' memories. Typing directly into a terminal in an internet café, the author had neither the means nor the technology to review and edit his own work. He simply let the words flow onto the screen and then pressed SEND, making this book the Zapruder film of earthquake memoirs. It is full of elliptical meanderings, digressions and repetitions, none of which manage to diminish the visceral quality of the writing. Profound truths and painful observations await the reader with each turn of the page. This gives Imajine a unique mode of narrative tension; you continue to read because at almost any moment you may stumble across a surprising thought or illuminating sentence. "This tragedy made me come to the understanding that we human beings are nothing," Casseus writes early on, "and that we should make good use of our time because we do not know when we are going to die."

The deservedly proud author, Claudel Casseus, in the Grand Rue two weeks ago.

I got my copy of Imajine the best way one can acquire a book: I bought it directly from the author, who autographed it for me. It is available directly from Penkiln Burn, and also from Amazon.co.uk, but there are very few copies for sale in Haiti. I'm hoping on my next visit it will be available in every gift boutique in the airport. Ask for it, when you are there buying your duty-free rum.

I want the US Navy to collaborate with the Cuban medical profession, now

Is it too much to ask that Obama immediately give orders to get a 5,000 bed nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Haiti and have it fully staffed with medical professionals and standing by offshore within a two-minute helicopter flight from downtown Port au Prince?

I don't have the heart to post more of the devastating photographs that are coming out of Haiti. Daniel Morel, who I met in Port au Prince during the politically dark fall of 1993, is the professional photographer I know who has the longest and most intense commitment to the country. He has lived there for most of the last twenty years. Apparently he was on the Grand Rue when the earthquake hit and emails that André Eugene of the Grand Rue artists is alive and okay.

His photos from yesterday are here. But there have been no new ones for the last eleven hours, and aftershocks continue this morning, despite fifteen powerful ones last night. This is likely due to worsening communications infrastructure.

Richard Morse, the proprietor of the beloved Oloffsson Hotel in Port au Prince, and the leader of the band RAM, has a twitterstream here. Much news amidst much repetition can also be sifted from the twitter hashtag #haitiquake. Apparently the Oloffsson Hotel is intact, presumably because it is a rickety old building made of wood, rather than a brittle building made of concrete and block.

From the Jacmel Film School, the Sine Lekol, where I taught sound recording this last September and the year before, reports are that students and staff are safe, but all facilities are destroyed and that the beautiful and historic town has suffered major and widespread damage.

I'm feeling totally impotent at the moment, and wondering what I can constructively do to help. Reading tweets and posting updates is an interesting experiment in comprehending the power and limitations of new instant crowd-sourced media like twitter, but at the moment my attempts to find out what is going on, and even to spread the word, feel onanistic.

What I would say is that this is clearly a massive humanitarian disaster. The non-existent public health infrastructure in Haiti means that yesterday's death and horror will be compounded in the days and weeks to come by outbreaks of cholera and typhoid as ruined buildings and whole neighborhoods remain unexcavated and even unsearched. Within days, and possibly within hours, depending on the "competition" from other news stories, the major media will move on from its coverage of these multiple earthquakes and it is then that we need to maintain our own compassion and sustain our own efforts to assist, whatever they may be.

The following charities have been suggested:

The Lambi Fund of Haiti is helping in rural areas and as a long-term goal addresses the environmental degradation that radically intensifies the destruction caused by natural catastrophes like these earthquakes and hurricane flooding.

Oxfam America.

As the comments point out I neglected to link to Paul Farmer's excellent Partners in Health I have been to his operation in Haiti's Plateau Central and can wholeheartedly endorse, and just gave to them myself.

My father suggests
Episcopal Relief and Development.

UPDATE:
Also, although collaboration with Cuban doctors may be too much to ask, the USS Vinson aircraft carrier is en route to Haitian waters, and two Canadian naval vessels are departing, or have departed Halifax, Nova Scotia, to aid in relief efforts.


...

Grotesquerie of Gargantuan Gargoyles, Part One

The cacophony of Port au Prince begins with the very first steps out of the airport terminal and the onslaught of freelance porters and taximen. Among the touts and eager family members waiting to greet a long-absent diasporan I spotted in the crowd my name, scrawled in black magic marker on a sheet of notebook paper. Minutes later I was in an Isuzu Trooper in the safe hands of Faubert, a driver for the Oloffson Hotel, sent to pick me up and drive me to Jacmel to teach sound at the Sine Lekol Jakmel.

The airport is on the wrong side of the capital for access to Haiti's south and west, and driving to Jacmel requires traversing a throbbing cross-section of Port au Prince quartiers. I immediately asked Faubert to make a stop at the very heart of the maelstrom, at 622 Boulevard Jean Jacques Dessalines, the city's main drag. Even on a Sunday afternoon the boulevard was a logjam of mobylettes weaving through the steaming refuse, and honking, blockaded tap-taps, the lurid, muralled minibuses that serve as public transportation. Diesel fumes and the sizzle of arc-welders and hot dust assaulted the nostrils. This is the auto-repair district, where dozens of unlicensed mechanics ply their trade on the sidewalks, banging and hammering and welding, pulling engine blocks and repairing oil pans and beating out panels and adjusting mufflers right on the sidewalk, as pedestrians struggle to walk by.




It is one of the most chaotic corners of a very chaotic city. There, waiting for me, was Andre Eugene Jean Robert, a leader and founder of the sculptors of la Grand Rue, a group of trash-collecting anarchist artists who have turned a vacant lot here into a kind of Vodouist Watts Tower. A twenty-foot figure of rusted, welded iron, part abandoned bedspring, part truck chassis, sprouting an immense vibrating phallus made from a a length of log fixed into the coil of a big rig's shock absorber, presides over the entrance.

Eugene, standing by the right leg of the Grand Rue watchman, included to show scale

Sproing! Eugene demonstrates the action of the, uh, lower portion of a gigantic torso

The doctor is in! Schedule your next checkup now. Appointments still available for November 1st

Behind are countless sculptures jammed together on this wasted plot of land, so densely packed together that it is impossible to tell where one figure ends and another one begins. The ensemble is a sort of metallic stew incorporating the refuse of modern society, Vodou spirits personified as grinning demons, djab, and hobgoblins, like incarnations of Maurice Sendak's Wild Things made from bent, tangled and mangled bits of metal, lumps of melted plastic and the rest of the bottom of the world's garbage barrel, stuff from the dregs of humanity's trash, which even here finds no other use. Shattered grates from cheap, expired Chinese electric fans, hubcaps, abandoned dolls and clothing, and even human skulls that wash out of the ground of the nearby central cemetery, all find their way into this army of demented creatures, metaphors for a world gone mad.

Bizango, if you don't know.

I only had fifteen minutes to spend with Eugene on the way into Haiti, as we were rushing to reach Jacmel before nightfall, but I promised to stop back for a closer look on my way out....

The Grand Rue after the earthquake

Georgia Popplewell visits the Grand Rue, so recently the site of the Ghetto Biennale.

Daniel Morel Interviewed

In my last post I promised a full interview with Daniel Morel, with whom I got to spend some time in the Grand Rue of Port-au-Prince on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the earthquake. I went to Haiti to write a couple of stories about his spectacular photo exhibit, a show that was put on in, by, for, and featuring the people of the Grand Rue. Morel, now 63, grew up just down the street, and his family had a bakery there. He was sitting in this same courtyard five years ago when the earthquake hit, and some of the same neighbors and friends and family who appear in the images helped install the show. Many, if not most of those who came to the opening know personally people in the pictures.

A nice long piece I wrote appeared in german in the Suddeutsche Zeitung, and I also recorded for the BBC's "From Our Own Correspondent." You can listen to that story about sixteen and a half minutes into this MP3 file, or read it online.

The day after the very moving opening of the exhibition, Daniel and I went back to the outdoor gallery space and sat down to talk about the ideas behind the show and the painful process of reconstructing Haiti. I've lightly edited the transcript for clarity:

How long have you been working as a photojournalist? Have you worked other places besides Haiti?

I would say over 30 years, that’s my career. I started professionally here in Haiti in 1986. I like working here; I’ve always worked here. Sometimes, in New York and other places, Venezuela, Santo Domingo. 

What do you consider the highlights of your career?

This. Also, the return of Aristide, when I was on the plane with him. October 15th, 1994.

That must be, probably, the day before I met you. 

To me what is really interesting about this show is that the people who are in the pictures are the people who helped put the show together, and they are also the people who live around here. Could you talk about the philosophy behind that?

That was a dream come true. It's the purpose of the show. That’s the reason I didn’t do it any other place, I didn’t do it in Petion-ville, I didn’t do it at the Oloffson, I wanted to do it here. Because the people here deserve to have a good show, up to an international standard. This show could be [put on display] anywhere. I think they deserve that.

How did your ideas for this come together?

The very next year it was in my head. Because the year [after the earthquake] I came back here to see all of the people that I had photographed, to see how they were doing. And since then the idea was in my head. I always wanted to do it with a book, but the book hasn’t come true yet, because of a lack of money and sponsorship. The second phase of this show will be to travel around Haiti, to take it to where people were not affected by the earthquake. And the book, always, of course.

The idea that was in my head was to do photography for the people. To do photography for people who never had any experience of photography. So that movement starts here. Not photography for the gallery, photography for the people. And they should have the same quality of photography, not lower.

Do you think it is a traumatic experience for people to see these photographs, the people around here?

Yes and no. I have observed a few moments—because I have been photographing their reactions—I have seen people who were very emotional when looking at the photographs, and I see others who were shocked and excited at the same time. Excited because they don’t know—they were in the earthquake, but they didn’t see the earthquake, or see themselves in the earthquake.

I think I was expecting people to be more traumatized than they were. People I saw were very moved, but in a positive way, and I’m having a bit of trouble understanding why that would be.

One reason is the way I edited the photographs. Destruction yes, but not so much blood and death. The photos are not so shocking. It’s a documentary about their life. I think that’s the main reason why you didn’t see so much emotion.

I saw plenty of emotion, but it was mostly positive.

Yes, it’s not very harsh, like sadness. I think this exhibition is more happiness than sadness. When people are thinking about earthquake photos, the first thing that comes to their mind is death, just like they exaggerated with the 300,000 dead. When other photojournalists came here, they focussed on the same thing: death, death, death, death. Only one subject symbolized the Haitian earthquake, and it was death. But human struggle is what really symbolizes this earthquake. That’s the way I shot it, and that’s the way people react to it.

From what I can remember, I only have four dead bodies from that moment that you see here. No more than four. 

I can easily imagine why the number of dead would be exaggerated. Of course I have no idea how many people died, but I know you feel strongly that the numbers were grossly exaggerated. Do you want to talk a little bit about why you think that is the case?

Yes. Because to have a death count, you have to count the bodies! I remember one of the networks said, the very next day, 150,000 dead, and from that point on it was out of control. Every hour the death count was going up without counting any dead bodies. Without counting how many were injured, without counting the missing. Myself personally, I don’t think more than 20,000 people died, but of course I am also in the wrong, because I did not count the bodies [either]. I think it shows disrespect for the country, disrespect for the victims; it’s taking advantage of the misery of the people to collect money. 

I went to Fort National, the whole place really was wiped out. And I asked the people in the neighborhood how many people died, and they told me maybe ten people. Also, the soldiers came here without body bags. That’s another way you could have made an estimation of how many died, by knowing how many body bags were distributed, you could have made some estimation.

Can you explain how your pictures were stolen?

I was not working for anyone. I received some offers [for the pictures] that were very low. I decided to put them on Twitpic, for the world to see it, and maybe to sell it, too. So, someone in the DR stole the photos and removed my name and put his name on it, but at the same time, people, the AFP, was trying to contact me, and then they decided to go with the other name. Then, the next day, they removed that name and they put my name, but without any authorization—and they say they had $20,000 for me—I never knew that! Basically the photos were unauthorized. The proper thing to do would have been to delete all the photos and send me an apology, say ‘we made a mistake,’ --they didn’t even bother to do that.

I was lucky to use Twitpic, because most people use the local phone company, and all the local phone companies were out of service. So us, in the hotel [Oloffson] we had a Satellite dish, and we had a little power left in the inverter, so I managed to send some photos out, but the power was in rationing. Every hour they would give us like ten minutes, I don’t remember. I think it was about twenty photos, 19, I think.

The power was off first of all. We had the inverter, but the generator was down, we couldn’t charge the battery, so we only had maybe an hour left of power, and we had to manage it, like ten minutes every once in a while, something like that. One reason I put the pictures on Twitter in high resolution was that it could’ve been the last time I was going to be able to have access to the internet. They [AFP] claimed this as an excuse, saying that I should not have put the pictures up at high resolution; it doesn’t matter. The lowest resolution can be stolen, too! Stealing is stealing!

Is there a difference for you between documentary and photojournalism?

For me, my style is documentary. Photojournalism, it depends how you do it, you can do it as documentary and you can do it as spot news also. All my pictures are a picture story. I don't like showing one photo. I always have a group of photos, a minimum of 4, 5, 6, or more. That way you can see the story better. I don't even have to write a word, you can see the story. There is a continuation, point A to point B.

You have the breaking news, the real news when it is happening, but the aftermath is more important than the breaking news, because that's the continuation of the story, and it's very important to know how your subject is doing, if they survive. That's the way I work. 

I would say that's very different from many photojournalists who come, they get the picture, and they move on. So they don't know whether that person has a future or not. It may have changed a little bit in the digital age of photojournalism, but I remember when we first met, twenty years ago or so at the Hotel Oloffson, those guys would be sitting around saying "oh, it's more of a hot scene in Rwanda than it is here, I'm going to fly over there", this kind of thing.

They cover spot news. They get paid for three days work, for four days work. Maybe it's not their fault.

I'm not blaming them. But you see an iconic photograph of a person, and you don't know what happened to them before, you don't know what happened to them afterwards.

That's one reason I choose not to travel. Because I think the story belongs to the local photographers. They are the ones who know the area, they are the ones who know their people. Why me, to go some other place, taking photos, when I have my own story to cover?

Haiti's enough of a story for an entire lifetime.

Yes.

You chose 5 years as a good time to look back at the earthquake; it's also a good time to look back and see what has happened in the country in those five years.

One year was too fresh, and two years still too fresh to evaluate it. I think five years is a good period of time. The president is elected for five years. Two presidents have passed since that five years, you know. And my personal evaluation is not about reconstruction. My personal view of this period of five years is still that there is a lack of leadership. Nobody is really leading the reconstruction, leading, to help the people. Because the death toll was exaggerated, the homeless were exaggerated, and that became anarchy, really. Anybody could claim they were a victim. Nobody asked them, where did you used to live? What did you lose? They didn't have a file on each person who was in a camp, first of all. The camps were born by themselves. The camps were not planned, well planned by some organization, namely the Haitian government. They let the international [community] take over. They thought the international community was going to do everything for them. That's wrong. The first step is that the Haitian government should lead the reconstruction. Instead of that, everybody is trying to make money. The Clinton Foundation came here with a lot of money; the airplanes used to be full coming here, everybody coming with their project. Some of those projects, they are very useful, like solar power, some other stuff I saw was really useful, and the money was available. I'm not blaming that the Clinton foundation stole all the money, yes they did, but mainly it's our fault, because the government didn't have any plan. They're lazy. They thought Clinton was going to come here and build everything for them. That's not the case. You should have your own plan, and you say what you need: "I need a roof for this place here," and make an estimate for how much the roof is going to cost, how much the labor is going to cost, and you ask for money or whatever, to me that's the way the reconstruction should be planned. It's not by building those little cages for people that I see--and then they're going to accuse the international community? No. If I have to accuse, I have to accuse myself. I didn't do the right thing, I didn't take the responsibility to do what I was supposed to do, I failed. I'm not blaming NGOs, I will never make an excuse and say that it's because of NGOs that this country is like this. Because us, as Haitians we are incapable of doing the reconstruction, and the reconstruction can be done only by Haitians! 

Considering the location where we are, this is as much like a gallery show in Chelsea as I could imagine. It's clean, it's a beautiful presentation. In a way I see the show as a metaphor, or a commentary on what hasn't happened in the reconstruction.

Yes. You see the way I did it here? I did it with respect. Not because it is for poor people should it have to be on a poor level. People are people. Not because they are poor you should build them one room, without windows, in the middle of the desert. Because they are poor? No. Every single human being deserves a minimum standard of living, but here the minimum standard of living--when somebody is poor, they are not even like an animal, they just build anything for them--this is wrong.

The international community only comes here in moments of crisis, and out of these crises somebody always manages to make money. So it's as if Haiti is a kind of resource of disaster that the international community can draw on in a way, from time to time. And I think that the way they treated you, the way they took your photographs is in a way a parallel. Like, they raped your photographs.

Yeah, and they sued me!

And they do the same thing in the aid arena.

Yes. The way they are building those little rooms, for the reconstruction; it's the same thing. In Haiti, as a photojournalist, I'm nothing. In Pakistan, as a photojournalist, I'm nothing. It's not a matter of race or color anymore, it's a matter of big and small. What happened to me here could happen to a Pakistani, or Afghan, or Iraqi or any small local photographer. Because before the internet the local photographer was nothing. When something happens, they charter an airplane, come here, take the shot, go back, make their book, enter for the Pulitzer. Like they did here, they stole my Pulitzer away from me! Somebody came here 72 hours after... I submitted my work for [the Pulitzer for] breaking news, and you could see all the headlines, with my picture, all over the world. And I managed not to win the Pulitzer, I was second? And the person who came 72 hours later was the winner? This is the same thing. The only people who are really supposed to have a better life, is them.

You don’t think that race…? I mean, to me it seems like the attitude was, “This guy can't really fuck with us, so....

They didn't even know I was in the US. They didn't even know I was a US citizen. They kept on asking my lawyer where to send the papers, my address in Haiti!

That was a special moment, when the shoeshine guy came in....

When I saw that, I mean, whew. It was what I had been dreaming of. When I saw that guy walk in here, freely, looking at those pictures; that’s probably the best moment in my life. I didn’t even look at his face, I was so excited. I just kept taking pictures of his box, and I didn’t even try to look at his reaction. But I was so excited. 

To see a shoeshine man walk in and look at those photos, with so much interest, it was like a dream. Because a shoe-shine boy, or man, in Haiti, that is the lowest category of human being. It's the lowest job, the worst work you can do in this society. Can you imagine, you have to carry a box, 

you walk for miles, and miles to make $2, or $1? When I saw that guy walk in here, first of all he knew he had the right to come here, freely, to look at those pictures. That guy carried his shoeshine box in here to look? I tell you, seeing that was worth everything I did. 

Negerhosen

Michael Pollan having inspired us to make more of an effort to buy local produce, we've headed up to the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market on each of the last two Saturdays to purchase grass-fed lamb, post-organic turnips and delicious buttery butter direct from the friendly farming souls who slave away upstate making the stuff. Grand Army Plaza is only a couple of long blocks from the Brooklyn Museum, so on our last visit we wandered over to see what was on.

In its last days, but well worth a look, is their two floor exhibition of contemporary Caribbean work. Although a bit hit or miss, and suffering from the apparent, unforgivable omission of Port au Prince's Grand Rue artists, the show has a few killers that you really shouldn't let pass you by. It may be my own personal bias, but the most wicked stuff, in every sense of the word, is out of Hispaniola.

Few of you, perhaps, have steamed, sailed, or rowed across the Mona Passage, the straight separating the Dominican Republic from Puerto Rico. I crossed it once on a passenger ferry and found myself to be the only tourist amongst several hundred emigrating Dominicans. The Passage is to the DR what the Straights of Florida are to Cubans: a dividing line between the comforts of home and desire, a mythical body of water, perilous and shark-infested. Should one dare to cross, the untold riches and wonders of the American dream await.

While the Coast Guard, which in the north Caribbean has essentially become little more than an immigration interdiction navy, seem focussed on Cubans and Haitians trying to reach Florida, the route for Dominicans trying desperately to make it to Nueva Yol's upper Manhattan heads east, to Puerto Rico. A clandestine ferry service of vessels known as Yolas makes the treacherous run. Once in PR the Dominicans blend in, scam a picture ID, and grab a jet north. While reading of a wall to keep out Mexicans, and the repatriation of Haitian boat people, we hear in the press almost nothing about the Dominicans or their route, inspiring those more conspiratorially minded to see yet another immigration policy hypocrisy, but no one in Santo Domingo is unaware of the yola flotilla or the greater meaning of the Mona Passage.

D'La Mona Plaza, image shamelessly stolen to promote hilarious and thoughtful art.

The Colectivo Shampoo proposes, via a prospectus typical of the sort found advertising an as-yet-unbuilt Caribbean resort of unparalleled luxury, the "D'La Mona Plaza," an opulent shopping mall and amenities center, to be constructed on a man-made island slap in the middle of the Mona Passage, in order that those undertaking the arduous yola voyage might have a place to pause and purchase, to amble through pavilions of Prada and take some refreshment. Complete with the sort of cheesy logo one associates with lesser golf courses, this imaginary architectural installation includes a three dimensional video proposal intercut with what appear to be real, bemused, Dominican news reports on the project, presumably in response to a press release publicizing this exciting but bogus investment opportunity.

The most genius moment is near the end, when the blond morning teevee babe comments on the cheesiness of the project's name, indicting her own Dominicans' taste with the question why does everything in this country have to have an apostrophe?

I thought you had to have balls to be a big fat white dude and wander about the streets in lederhosen, but having visited Munich I'm now aware that it is common for people routinely to rock the leather shorts without any irony, stigma, or self-consciousness whatsoever. Not so for Haitian-American-German artist Jean Ulrick Desert, who manages to raise more questions about national identity and race just by pulling on a pair of suede britches than most people consider over an entire lifetime. He called his project Negerhosen. Now of course my German isn't so good, but my understanding is that schwartz translates as "black," while neger is the precise German equivalent of just what you think it is.

Jean Ulrick Desert, traditional German man, in another image pirated from elsewhere on the web

Jean Ulrick, tired of being denigrated, as it were, sick of being treated as a second-class citizen, pulled on the lederhosen and went on his merry way, documenting the reactions and interest of his fellow man, who were as amused and intrigued to see a gentleman of color sporting the national costume as I was to discover shops full of the shorts lining the streets of Munich. The brilliance of this is that while lederhosen may not be as common today as the three-piece suit, there is nothing extraordinary about encountering someone wandering about a Bavarian beer garden in a pair of them--only tourists like myself would be likely to whip out a camera and snap away--unless the man wearing them is black, in which case the sight is remarkable. Desert documented his outings wearing lederhosen in simple snapshots, on which he then writes matter-of-fact journal entries describing his friendly encounters with the German public. The result is a powerful but non-confrontational exposure of the limits of equality and identity in today's Germany. One needs little imagination to apply his findings to the wider world.

UPDATE: Even more deliciously, the Colectivo Shampoo appears to double as an actual, viable Dominican advertising agency and design firm, Shampoo Communications.

Ghetto Biennale the Third! Calling all artists...

As if I needed any more indications of the lightning passage of time, my dear friend Leah Gordon wrote recently to remind me that the THIRD ghetto biennale is imminent. For those of you have been living in a hole in the ground for the last four years, the ghetto biennale of Port au Prince, Haiti is an art extravaganza that now rivals Venice's in terms of prestige, aura and above all, ambiance. It is held on the campus of the sculptors of the Grand Rue, about whom I have written extensively. Here, in late November, going into December, successful artist applicants from around the globe will gather to make art amidst the ruins of what, pre-Earthquake, was an impoverished but bustling business district at the heart of teeming Port au Prince. Think of it, as Leah once put it, as an artist's residency in a shantytown. All work is produced, completed and shared on-site.

Screening a completed film project at the 2011 Ghetto biennale.
Photos: courtesy Leah Gordon

The deadline for proposals is June 23rd at midnight. I'm not sure if that is Port au Prince or Greenwich Mean Time. I urge you to apply yourself. For more information visit ghettobiennale.com.

The Ghetto Biennale online

Now online is PRI's Christmas day edition of "The World," which included my report on the Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

If you are visiting from "The World" and want more, scroll down a couple of posts for additional images and commentary from Port-au-Prince's Grand Rue. I'll happily address any questions left in the comments.

Passing the buck...

I am occasionally asked if blogging isn't a distraction from more "worthy" writing projects, and I explain that the habit is a bit like the oil pump in a car. It keeps the writing muscles lubricated and active so that the engine is primed when it is time to produce some literary horsepower. I admit that it is sometimes a welcome distraction from other mundane tasks, doing the laundry, for instance. But rarely am I so busy with other writing that I had better not waste time blogging.

One of those times is now. I've just returned from an absurdly short trip to Haiti, organized at the last moment to cover the Ghetto Biennale, a unique cultural interchange between the sculptors of the Grand Rue, residents of a teeming Port au Prince slum, and an international coterie of visiting artists with a diverse array of site-specific projects. Almost all the visitors had their preconceptions immediately challenged, if not shattered, by their initial exposure to the difficult conditions and the level of poverty they encountered.

But because I will need to spend several days formulating my thoughts on the Biennale into numerous newspaper articles and at least one radio piece, I don't have time to tell you more about it here. Instead I would direct those of you frantic for your daily dose of travel musing to go and read my father's fascinating initial account of his recent trip to Israel.

To whet your appetite, here are a few of his delicious observations,

on Jewish celebration:

"...the ceremony of most Jewish festivities—(boils) down to three propositions:(1) They tried to kill us. 2) They failed. (3) So, let’s eat."

on food and its role in Jewish versus Christian community:

"An agnostic can have a fine time at a Shabbat meal; he is unlikely to go to High Mass for either the sociability or the gastronomy."

on the church at Bethlehem, in the West Bank:

"I didn’t have the sense of the money-changers actually having taken over the control of the temple as I did with some of the more familiar Christian sites in Jerusalem."

Enjoy.

Sonje means remember

I made a quick trip to Port-au-Prince last week to catch the opening of Daniel Morel's show of the photographs he took on the day of the earthquake, five years ago on January 12, 2010. It was an entirely unique event in my experience of the Haitian art world. He displayed the photographs in the Grand Rue inner-city neighborhood where he took them, so that the primary audience for the show was the same people who appear in the images. The are the subjects, or the friends and neighbors of those seen running, panicked, through the streets, in the pictures. Furthermore his assistants and docents are all drawn from the community, making it entirely a neighborhood affair. It was extremely moving, and I remarked at the time that I have never seen visitors to any Chelsea gallery stare with such intensity at the images on the wall.

I hope to post an interview with Daniel Morel about the show soon. At the moment I have a piece about it running on the BBC's "From Our Own Correspondent." You can listen to it online here, or catch on the BBC World Service wherever and whenever they run the program.

Daniel, in front of his exhibition.

ps: Anyone still having trouble with the link, as pointed out by phuzz in the comments, can cut / paste this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04ykk4w

Times of London

Knick-nack shelf of postmodern gargoyles on the Grand Rue, Port au Prince

My first story on the Ghetto Biennale ran in the Times of London over the weekend in the Saturday Review section. To date no trace of it online, as far as I can google. If you are in the UK, save me a copy.