Haiti In Photos (Part 2)

By Bryan Schaaf on Saturday, January 12, 2008.

see more topics in:

Haitians say that what the eyes do not see, the heart cannot feel. There is much to that. Considering how numb many of us have become to violence, it is difficult to convey the enormity of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur without images. Without photos, it is also hard to show the beauty of a long maligned country like Haiti. Below are some more sites (and a link to a book) that convey the beauty of Haiti and Haitians in a way that writing cannot. Enjoy!

Daniel Kedar: A well known photographer with a nice collection of photos from throughout Haiti and many other countries as well.

Windows on Haiti: This very well organized online community has photographs from a number of different members. Check them out for Haitian music and art as well.

Marcello Casal Jr: Marcello pulled together an interesting multimedia presentation with photographs, video, and music. It focuses on life in Cite Soleil. A quote from a resident of Cite Soleil - "The journalists come and go, but they never come to Cite Soleil"

Snapshot Journeys: This is a travel blog focused on the northern portion of the country with photos from Cap Haitian, Fort Liberte, and Labadee Beach - a glimpse into a parallel universe where Haiti is a top tourist destination.

Webshots: This website has a collection of amateur photography from visitors to Haiti, a variety of locations. Worth a look.

Paroles et Lumieres (Words and Light): This is the best book of photography that I have ever seen, Haiti or otherwise. A real work of love. The photos are spectacular and the accompanying poetry in Kreyol, French, and English is amazing. The translations say the same thing, but in a way that reflects the rhythm of each of the language. This book always makes me wistful - can't recommend it highly enough.

Photos of the Destruction of Petionville Cemetary (NYT Lens)

Submitted by Bryan Schaaf on Tue, 05/18/2010 - 10:42.

5/18/2010
By MAGGIE STEBER
.
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/showcase-163/
.
These are not beautiful photographs. Maybe they are morbid. They stand as evidence of what is gone and as indictments of a grim declaration that dismisses the history and culture of an already-beleaguered Haitian people. A few weeks ago, the mayor of Pétionville, Claire Lydie Parent, announced that the old cemetery would be demolished to make way for a bus station. In Haiti, that translates as an open area where buses gather to take passengers to the provinces. Pétionville is an upper- and middle-class neighborhood overlooking the demolished Port-au-Prince below.
.
Undamaged by the earthquake that struck in January, the cemetery was crowded with brightly painted mausoleums decked out with metal flower wreaths. Names carved in marble marked the final resting place of many families, buried over a long period of time. A cross to Baron Samedi, the voodoo spirit of death, stood in a corner where people would bring him coffee and cigarettes in exchange for a favor.
.
Until bulldozers came and demolished the whole cemetery. Where there was once a small, beautiful memorial, there is now a pile of rubble; another victim of Haiti’s earthquake, this time at human hands. People who had lost so much already were at a loss as to how to stop the demolition, if they even knew about it. Some friends and I went up onto the rubble to look for small remnants of this sacred place. Others went looking for family members.
.
We photographed anything that might bear witness: tiny things, tragic things, bones, clothing, a shoe, part of a coffin were strewed in with the overwhelming rubble. The artist Magda Magloire was lucky, in a sense. Her niece worked in the mayor’s office and called to warn her about the demolition. Magda rushed to the cemetery and retrieved the bones of her two brothers, Stivenson Magloire, a famous Haitian painter, and his brother, Ramphis Magloire, also a painter. All three are the children of Louisiane St. Fleurant, the godmother of the Saint-Soleil movement in Haitian art.
.
Stivenson Magloire was stoned to death in the early 90s during political turmoil. We went to Magda’s house and she showed us the bones. Outside a hard rain fell and drowned out all conversation. There, on an upstairs porch, stood a big plastic shopping bag filled with bones: long and yellow, several skulls in tact — the remains of her brothers.
.
What will you do with them, she was asked. “I will rebury them someplace safe,” she replied. The earthquake took many victims in the 45 seconds it shook Haiti: over a quarter million people were killed, one million left homeless, thousands of houses reduced to a pile of concrete pebbles, and now this. For the people of Pétionville, it was as though another earthquake had struck. Neither in life nor in death would anything be spared.
.
On Jan. 13, in “No End of Trouble. Ever,” Maggie Steber wrote, “It seems as though the fates pointed to Haiti and decided this is where they would put the portal between paradise and hell.” Eight days later, in “A Culture in Jeopardy, Too,” she added presciently: “Devastated by the loss of its people and its places, Haiti stands on the precipice of losing something more precious — as audacious as that sounds amid all this death — because it is transcendent. Haiti stands to lose its culture.”