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// Leah Gordon

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Leah Gordon
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Kanaval


Kanaval

Kanaval is Leah Gordon’s new book of extraordinary photographs of Haiti’s Jacmel carnival. Crucially, it also contains oral testimonies revealing the narratives behind the masks.

 

Paul Bradshaw: You’ve been involved with Haiti for a long time – what was it that drew you to Haiti in the first place?

Leah Gordon: I'd love to say it must have been the spirits but actually it was hearing Jill Dando on the Holiday programme warning people about going to Haiti whilst expounding the joys of a family holiday in the Dominican Republic. At the end of the show she turned to camera and said, “I must warn you that the Dominican Republic shares the island with another country, Haiti, but don't go there by accident. It has dictators, military coups, black magic, Vodou and death.” I thought wow all that and hot weather and within a month I was on a plane from Miami to Port au Prince, clutching a copy of The Comedians by Graham Greene with no particular idea except to ask the taxi driver for the Olafson Hotel where Greene had set his novel.


PB: When did you first go there?

LG: I first went in February 1991 just after the inauguration of Aristide, returned in 1993 to document the military coup and have been going back ever since.

 

PB: Did it make you want to learn to speak Kreyol?

LG: I do speak Kreyol. Yes I immediately got a set of cassettes and a book. I love the language as it's very rhythmic and you don't have to conjugate verbs!!!

 

PB: You are clearly passionate about the visual art of the Haitian people…does that help provide a framework for a deeper understanding of the culture generally?

LG: Haitian art is a window to Haitian people, history and Haitian culture. Also Haiti is a country where the material is very transient and weak but the imaginative and creative life is fierce. There are many theories as to why there is such a rich and powerful cultural and visual life in Haiti. I feel it is something to do with Haiti's isolation from European influences after the Slave Revolt. [The slave rebellion in 1791 resulted in the establishment of Haiti as the first free black state in 1804].


PB: At first were you aware of how Vodou underpinned all aspects of life in Haiti?

LG: No I didn't know that at all. But the deeper I dug I realised that Vodou flowed through the whole carnival. That Vodou is Haiti's past, its African ancestral past and it delineates the history of the Slave Revolt too.

 

Kanaval

 

PB: What was your initial response to the Carnival in Jacmel?

LG: From the first time I saw it in 1995 I realised it was a very unique event. The whole thing was a weird lo-fi inversion of spectacle. Troupes of performers acting out mythological and political tales in a surreal street theatre that meandered around the town following no particular route, rather than in organised parades. It was a kind of flaneur's carnival. Whatever the carnival lacks in glitz and sequins, it makes up for in home-grown surrealism and mythical metaphor. 

 

After a while it became rapidly apparent to me that there were many underlying narratives. I first saw a denim-clad St Michel with a cowboy hat riding horseback and brandishing a wooden sword of righteousness at a crowd of devils and knew something strange was afoot. Also the first sight of the cardboard masked solicitors and judges with portable chairs and table accompanying the Jwiff Errant who resembles a terrifying Father Xmas. There was something beyond mask and costume that kept taking me back there.

 

Kanaval Kanaval

 

PB: I love the fact that you have rejected that digital camera route and opted for a film camera and a light meter. Why did you decide to stay with that?

LG: I use a 1960s Roleicord medium format twin lens reflex camera and a Lunasix light meter and shoot onto black and white negative film. I love that camera and think I deal with a square aesthetically better than a rectangle. Perhaps its more egalitarian having neither emphasis of width or length. I am a bit of a luddite too and I like film.

 

Kanaval

 

PB: As you say in the book the process becomes part of the dialogue…

LG: The camera is totally mechanical and once the film of only 12 exposures is loaded the shutter has to be cocked before you can actually take a picture. All exposure changes are manual and winding onto the next frame is quite laborious too. I wander the streets searching for characters that will agree to be photographed. I always ask beforehand and pay people for the chance to photograph them. If they agree, and many do not, they always seem to be very patient with the long process, as I have to take a light reading, change the speed and aperture and focus.

 

But perhaps, with the slow process, a space between myself and the sitter is created which seems to leave the hustle-bustle of the street and enter the territory of the old-fashioned portrait studio. The sitters strike poses reflecting their masked characters. My photographs are not attempting to represent any level of authentic carnival mood - it is more about recreating a photo studio on the streets. There is always stasis in my images as the process takes a bit of time. The time and space created allows for a little of the narrative to seep through.

 

Kanaval 

 

PB: How did you unravel the history implicit in the costumes?

LG: As a photographer, I was always keenly aware of the difficulties and responsibilities in representing Haiti. Since the slave revolt Haiti has been a mythological epicentre for racist and colonial anxieties. And many of these encoded mythologies are reproduced and replicated through the visual representation of Haiti. Looking at my increasingly iconic photograph of the Lanceurs de Corde, the two men with the bulls horns, one of the first images I took of carnival in 1995, I was aware of how easily the wildly exotic image could feed into a deep well of stereotype. Whilst I could not eradicate all the power imbalance inherent in photographing another culture or overturn the 200 year cultural demonization of Haiti - I could at least find strategies for ‘damage limitation’.

 

So after seven years of photographic documentation I realised that the images were not enough. So I returned three times to Jacmel in a more tranquil, non-carnival period and collected the oral histories of the people making and wearing the costumes. These are the stories behind the masquerade - a fantastic mix of personal revelation, memorial of the slave revolt, political satire, social comment and of course Vodou.

 

What I discovered and what was important to me is that the people are channelling their own histories, both national and personal, through mask, gesture, myth and mystical ritual. They are the most poetic and touching stories I have ever heard. They restore the narrative to the photographs and reduce the level of spectacle.

 

PB: Keeping post-earthquake Haiti in people’s consciousness seems to be very difficult despite the scale of the disaster. Is there any chance of an exhibition to travel with the book?

LG: I am currently in discussions about showing the work in New Orleans during carnival next year which would be a perfect place for the whole project. I would also love to show it in Salvador, Bahia in Brazil during carnival too.

 

 

Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti by Leah Gordon is published by Soul Jazz Publishing.

 

'The Invisibles' – an exhibition of Leah Gordon’s photographs is at Riflemaker London W1 until 5 September 2010.

 

Photographs copyright Leah Gordon. Courtesy of Soul Jazz Records Publishing





Paul Bradshaw / Straight No Chaser



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