Beyond the spectacle of disaster Two photo exhibitions reach beyond the country’s well-publicized chaos

By John Pohl, Gazette Visual Arts Critic.


Some of Benoit Aquin’s photos — such as Carnival VIII — are so dense with elements that they are almost abstract.

Photograph by: Benoit Aquin

MONTREAL – Two photographers who have visited Haiti numerous times over the past 15 years are exhibiting images of the Caribbean nation at two local venues.

Benoit Aquin’s McCord Museum exhibition features photographs taken in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, while Leah Gordon’s street portraits of Haitians in carnival costumes are being shown at the PHI Centre.

Aquin is interested in how people cope with their physical environment, Hélène Samson, McCord’s curator of photography, said at an exhibition preview. She noted that Aquin is a documentary photographer whose work is collected by museums of fine arts. (The National Gallery of Canada recently purchased three of Aquin’s photographs of the Chinese dust bowl, where overuse has transformed a huge area of arable land into desert.)

Benoit Aquin’s In Flight captures a slice of daily life, far removed from the common images of Haiti. Photograph by: Benoit Aquin

Aquin’s Haiti: Chaos and Daily Life includes photographs of the earthquake’s destruction, Haitians in their temporary shelters, their rituals for dealing with death and scenes of street carnivals.

The aspect of Haiti being reduced to disaster and spectacle bothers Phil Carpenter, a Jamaica native and photographer who has worked in Haiti as an employee of The Gazette.

“I absolutely love Benoit’s work,” he said. “The people mostly seemed quite unaware of the camera, which suggests that either they were quite comfortable with him in their space or he managed to be unobtrusive, or both. I think that takes practice and a genuine caring for the people.

“But how do we get beyond spectacle?” Carpenter asked. “That’s the blessing and curse of documentary photography — the need for time (and the money to pay for it) to document well.”

But just the mention of Haiti may colour a viewer’s perception. Gordon noted in an email from Britain that it’s “difficult for people to mention Haiti without its subtitle: ‘the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.’ ”

Photograph by:

Aquin first encountered Haiti as a four-year-old in the 1960s. He made return visits starting in the 1990s, including five or six since the earthquake, both as a photographer and volunteer, he said.

The Montreal photographer’s projects, like one on pollution in the Yamaska region, reflect his social and environmental concerns. “Most of my projects are focused,” Aquin said in an interview. “Haiti is larger; it’s more about life.”

Aquin used a 35mm camera in Haiti because of the depth of field possible at fast shutter speeds. He doesn’t crop his photos, some of which are so dense with elements “flying about” that they are almost abstract. For example, he sees the children painted yellow in Carnival VIII as evoking the figures in Matisse’s The Dance.

And he’s fast with the shutter button. “If people say something, I stop. But I’ve already taken the picture,” he said.

In Flight is one photograph that seems to be a slice of daily life, beyond any hint of spectacle. It’s of a young man playing soccer at dusk as garbage burns in the street behind him.

Aquin said he likes to work with writers, not to describe his photos, but to add an independent dimension to an exhibition. At the McCord, his photos are accompanied by passages from Dany Laferrière’s memoir of the earthquake, The World Is Moving Around Me. “When everything else collapses, culture remains,” Laferrière writes. “The people who are still moving will save this city. The crowd’s appetite for life makes living possible in these dusty streets.”

Gordon’s approach may be more to the liking of Carpenter, whose Breast Stories: Cancer Survivors Speak Out (Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd., 2012) combines portraits of women with the stories of their struggle against the disease.

Gordon purposely joined a narrative to her photographs “to try to reduce the level of spectacle,” she wrote. Her Haitian photographs for Kanaval at the PHI Centre are street portraits of individuals in the town of Jacmel, who dress in costumes to act out myths, history and political satire during the city’s carnival.

Gordon, who said she has been visiting Haiti at least three times a year for the past 16 years, has compiled oral histories of many of the costumed people she photographs. Some of the images in the exhibition are accompanied by explanatory texts from the oral histories; some are not.

Gordon photographs with a 50-year-old mechanical film camera, and later looks for her subjects. She said she easily finds leaders of large groups performing in Jacmel’s street carnival, but individuals are harder to track down.

Gordon’s The Rope Throwers is accompanied by a text in the words of Salnave Raphael, leader of a large group. He says they dress to commemorate Haitian independence, which was won in 1804 following a slave rebellion. They use a mixture of crushed charcoal and syrup to blacken their skin, carry ropes to indicate bondage and horns to make them more menacing and powerful — because, Raphael says, “in carnival, people like to be scared.”

The Slaves, by contrast, shows two children Gordon never saw again, at least not dressed the way they were in their photograph.

“In most countries, history has been replaced by consumer, media or terrorist spectacle. It is still a potent force in Haiti,” curator Cheryl Sim writes in the exhibition brochure. “And, as Gordon writes: ‘(Carnival) is people taking history into their own hands and moulding it into whatever they decide.’ ”

Haiti: Chaos and Daily Life continues to May 12 at the McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke St. W. For more information, visit www.mccord-museum.qc.ca. Benoit Aquin’s website is www.benoitaquin.com.

Kanaval continues to April 27 at the PHI Centre, 407 St. Pierre St. For more information, visit www.phi-centre.com. Leah Gordon’s website is www.leahgordon.co.uk.

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Pink Art Gallery will have a memorial exhibition on Sunday, March 17 for Sylvain P. Cousineau, who died March 6 in London. The exhibition will include his 30-foot painting Titanic. For more information, visit www.pinkespaceart.tumblr.com.

john.o.pohl@gmail.com

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