When I’m in Haiti, I carry a camera. I document. I record what I find captivating and haunting.

Mostly it’s my way of processing and organizing what I see. I’m a visual learner. Sometimes I need to steady myself and my emotion by inserting a camera between myself and the reality I face. I get to study a single mosaic square in a huge, confusing tableau.

A child playing along the sea, a mother caring for a baby, an old woman soon to die and unable to rise from the floor of a poor house latrine. That’s life in Haiti.

These photos and these moments have become a passion.

It’s a way to reach out, grasp and process a world before me. Things that surprise, delight and sometimes hurt. I come back with moments tough and beautiful that will take months to process. That’s Haiti.

And, its beauty is real in a way we don’t often find here. Unvarnished. Like raw wood. The grain still is open. In a natural state we rarely experience in our varnished homeland. The details are too easily forgotten when again surrounded by what we call normal.

So, I carry a camera. To remember.