Under a Grudging Sun: Photographs from Haiti Libere 1986-1988 - Softcover

Webb, Alex

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0500275440 ISBN 13: 9780500275443

Publisher: Thames & Hudson, 1989

Synopsis

Photographs depict conditions in Haiti immediately folliowing the departure of dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, including the desperate poverty and the violence surrounding the disastrous November 1987 election

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Magnum photographer Webb visited Haiti at several intervals in the past decade and a half, observing radical shifts in that island's political fortunes, from the brutality of "Papa Doc" Duvalier's regime to the brief freedom following his downfall to a military coup and government-controlled "elections." But, meanwhile, Webb also looked carefully at Haiti's everyday colors and textures, sounds and smells. His 58 color photographs, taken during 1986-88, are vibrantly physical evocations of wind and light brushing against scenes of extreme human privation. Some pictures are gently elegiac: a plantation house dwindling into decay; a waterfall where people bathe, savoring a reprieve from heat and dust. A portrait of four schoolboys saying prayers, each using his own gestural language, offers a striking oasis of calm. In pictures of political victims--whose martyrdom speaks for itself--Webb wisely refrains from editorial comment or compositional cleverness. His attention to the details of a hardscrabble peasant existence, though compromised by the voluptuous glamour of a few images, generally stays true to the workaday energy of Haitians, held tragically in check.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thames & Hudson
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0500275440
• ISBN 13: 9780500275443
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96