This was personal for me. I had been at yoga, reclining in a relaxation pose, when unknown to me, more than a hundred thousand people were dying in a few seconds in Haiti, where I had planned to be holding a 100Eyes photo workshop in less than two weeks time. As the news streamed in, a surreal email from a student writing about the quake, and then a click away to the first images of the Presidential Palace collapsed, I really needed no more information to understand the catastrophe. I had been in Haiti the year before, in Gonaives, where mudslides, after a wave of hurricanes, had covered the city. I had stood on the top floor of the Montana, and looked out across the valley at the concrete slums rising up the mountainside, and talked with my friend Katherine Chermantin, about the possibility of a horrendous calamity in the form of an earthquake hitting Port au Prince. We had talked about the non-existent building codes, and that Haiti was on a fault zone. At that time I thought that the slum houses would slide down the hill. Ironically, it was the mighty Montana that fell, crushing 300 people inside, and the small houses remained intact, as did much of Petionville. At that time Haiti was to be a longterm project. I had ten years to document the story. I was in no rush. All that ended with the email and the news. This was the final chapter, not the beginning. And much of my work appeared in jeopardy, the wonderful Kanaval project in Jacmel with Zanmi Lakay. Of course my loss was small compared to the Haitians.
Just as an explanation, the photographs here were taken during four days of walking through Port au Prince, without a translator, or an escort of any sort. Even in the most chaotic of situations, Haitians were polite, encouraging, and welcoming. There is much of Port au Prince that is not devastated. The city is not lost. But what the future will be, with infrastructure collapsed and perhaps a hundred thousand in camps around the city, remains to be seen. But one can only bow with respect to the resilience and the strength of the Haitian people, who for the most part dug themselves from the rubble. Hopefully we can help them in their journey forward.

Andy Levin
New Orleans

Thanks to NYCMedics, Phil Suarez, and Jet Blue for sponsoring me on this trip, and to my students for continuing to support me on this project. Click here for information on the Haiti workshops.

Link to this page:  Tremblemann de Te: Photographs by Andy Levin

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