Haïti
The work of the American photographer Jane Evelyn Atwood on Haiti is a radical break with the imagery of violence and misery that the news regularly imposes to evoke this Caribbean country. It is also a break with the artist’s writing, who chooses color to translate her fascination for the Haitian people, “incredibly alive and amazing. Accustomed to long-term black and white investigations on prostitution, prisons, landmine victims or AIDS, Jane Evelyn Atwood approaches Haiti without prejudice, with an eye that she wants to rid of any prior influence. Modestly, she discovers people, she observes the daily life of individuals, the diversity of singular lives confronted with the knowledge of how to live and the duty to live that poverty and inequality require. She shows the untouched beauty of a people who do not abandon themselves to the black sun of fatality and constantly reinvent a possible future. Atwood’s Haitian photographs, especially his portraits, seem to draw chiaroscuro in broad daylight; color is not used here to accentuate a rich chromatic range already present in the viewfinder, but to underline contrasts, shadows or lights, which contribute to install a subtle form of intimacy with the photographed universe.
DETAILS
The exhibition consists of 24 color vintage prints framed with white matting and under glass
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Hôtel Paul Delaroche
58 rue Saint Lazare, 75009 Paris
+33 1 53 01 85 85
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