Break Time in Leogane
February 3, 2011 at 5:23 pm
(If you can’t see the above video, click here)
by Mike
A little video of break time at a rubble site. N-Joy!
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More Photos
January 21, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Men drive by a model home in Leogane
by Mike
Here are more photos from the walk around town today.
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The Presentation of Haiti
December 10, 2010 at 1:06 am
My view of Claude’s story.
by Mike
I’ve been reading up on how Haiti is presented in the media, and I thought I’d share some links about Haiti and storytelling.
This guy is a photojournalist who’s extremely sensitive to the power dynamics of storytelling:
“Please help me, who is not in Haiti, understand what is really going on. Please do not produce work that is a substitute for the beggar’s bowl. Please don’t demean me, the Haitians or yourself. Please let me hear and see an Haitian.”
He’s highly critical of his profession, and I find all his writing inspired.
To Hear or See an Haitian Once the Party Has Died Down at The Spinning Head
An article by Rebecca Solnit about the wording and emphasis of media coverage:
In Haiti, Words Can Kill
Eliza Gregory writes about being a white photographer objectifying non-white people:
Looking Back at a Picture I Wish I Hadn’t Taken
And finally, in a video from TED, Chimamanda Adichie talks about our tendency to reduce a group to a single story, and the problems that arise out of that act. Before seeing this video, I used to say that the most important thing I have learned from travel is that “Everyone has a story.” Now I realize that I got it a little wrong in a big way. It should read, “Everyone has stories.” The change is more than just pluralization, it’s the realization of multi-dimensionality, complexity.
My goal, going to Haiti, is to avoid taking pictures in a way that I deny the subjects their agency. This wouldn’t even be an issue (or a blog post) if I didn’t recognize in myself a tendency to do the opposite as a result of the media’s story arcs in my own thought patterns.
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Documenting an NGO in Haiti
December 7, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Hi People – So, I’m going to be spending three months in Haiti this winter helping an NGO document its efforts to rebuild schools (etc) in the town of Leogane. There will be various adventures on either side of the internship (which runs Jan 20 to Apr 20), like visiting Azerbaijan, for example.
Azure will come to Haiti for a month, and during the other times she’ll be elsewhere, TBD. It’s all pretty vague right now, but it will be concrete by the time it happens.
Enjoy!
