Haiti: a brief view from 2007.

 

         If you are like me, you are watching daily the incredible images happy and disheartening of all that is happening in the aftermath of the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti over the course of the last week. Most of us can't even begin to comprehend the scale of the death and destruction.

          Catholic Relief Services, one of my clients, sent me to Haiti in December of 2007 in a whirlwind tour of points north of Port Au Prince and the locations where the NGO's AIDSRelief programs were saving lives. We moved hospital to clinic to hospital documenting the programs with little time in between to document daily life. We, nevertheless could see a country struggling with poverty and struggling from the beating dished out by conflict and hurricanes just in the previous three years.

          We rolled into Port Au Prince on the last day as the sun was fading and the traffic was thick. As we made our way toward the center of town, I caught a glimpse of a shanty that clung to a riverbank, and was impressed by its size, and not surprised by the makeshift nature that was obvious even in the quick glimpse.

          Of all of the shanties and poorly constructed slums I've seen all over the world, I'm not sure why I noticed it, I didn't even have an opportunity to get a frame off. The next morning, after checking in at CRS's main office in PAP, we headed to the airport.

          Again, no real time to stop and explore a neighborhood, and so I did what I could, trying to make images from a moving vehicle. When I do this, every once in a while, I get something good. And then I was homeward bound.

          In the first news of the earthquake, it was that image that first popped into my mind. It was only one example of how poorly-constructed are the homes, even the more officially-built structures in Port Au Prince. My heart sank. I knew just how horrible this was going to be before the first pictures emerged. If you can imagine the entirety of your city collapsing. I mean ALL of it, with people trapped in every single structure, you begin to see. I just can't get my head around it. I wonder how many of the people in my few PAP photographs how many for the people I met are alive.

          So, I wanted to share just a few of my more favorite images from that brief time in 2007 when I first met Haiti, perhaps just as a short break from all of the much more difficult images we're seeing from the disaster.