This Ain’t No Mud Club

It was 1979. I had only just begun to take photographs. Most of my time in life at that point was spent late into the evening, until the sun was coming up, at the Mudd Club in lower Manhattan. There I observed a downtown scene that was bizarre, fashionably cryptic at times, youthfully exuberant, its veneer quasi-religious. So when I decided to make a spontaneous journey to Haiti, nothing could prepare me for the magic realism that I was about to witness. Yes ~ this was no Mudd Club.

I was a portraitist. I had met my new girlfriend Kirsten in the aforementioned club only three weeks prior to my flight to the Caribbean island. Oddly enough, we had both thought about Haiti, and we were aware of Maya Deren and Voodoo, the paintings, the street scene, and the intense poverty. We went fearlessly and jumped at the chance to go. Jacmel, the wonderfully idyllic coastal town that had prospered during the colonial turn of the century due to it’s rich coffee plantations, had a charm unlike any other I had ever seen. The French colonial mansions were stunning. The people so warm and engaging. They wanted to bring you in. But my French was not so good. My Creole non-existent. The indigenous folk music rang out at night and the festive environment was a first for this New Yorker. I was initiated into the magic that was to be Haiti. You have to remember, this was the era of Baby Doc Duvalier and the poor were many. He controlled the repressive Ton-Ton Macoute, the “Revolutionary Guard” of Haiti. The first independent republic in the Caribbean, Haiti nonetheless remained in a time warp, a living anachronomism, like in the time of the early 1800’s. Throw in very little investment and deforestation, and you have a very poor place.

I had brought my Balcar studio strobe light with me along with my Rollei 2 ¼ camera, my Pan-X film, but, not being an electrician and even then knowing about voltage, the unit blew up ~ it was a 110v light/power source. (The current there was 220v).

So I used a little hand flash I brought, thank God, and grabbed the bedspread from the Hotel Jacmelienne to use as a makeshift backdrop, and I sought a boutique off the Iron Market to set up the portraits. “Deux Gourdes por foto?” I would ask. I wound up “casting” right off the main market. And for the equivalent of 40 cents, I had 200+ people willing to sit for a portrait and a Polaroid.

So I used a little hand flash I brought, thank God, and grabbed the bedspread from the Hotel Jacmelienne to use as a makeshift backdrop, and I sought a boutique off the Iron Market to set up the portraits. “Deux Gourdes por foto?” I would ask. I wound up “casting” right off the main market. And for the equivalent of 40 cents, I had 200+ people willing to sit for a portrait and a Polaroid. It all worked out, in the intense heat of the day and the intense heat of that flow. I got the mix, even with the little light source which taught me so much about minimalism.

And at night, the place felt like magic, too. If you ever doubted Voodoo’s existence, Jacmel was not the place to disbelieve.

In any case, I’ve always loved these portraits. They look spontaneous. Like they were shot in a cave. The hand flash was perfect. And the Polaroids were a great touch in the sense that giving them to the subjects was a wonderful gift for having sat for me.
I could only hope that the black and white film looked as good as the sample Polaroids had looked. And it really was the start of a certain fascination documenting the “unseen” peoples of the world. Other people could handle the celebrities. I’ll take the common man pushing the wheelbarrow.

I used to say to myself that I would begin an art career in order to photograph everyone in the world. I got off to a pretty good jump, but after some time I realized it was going to take alot more time than I had anticipated. But Haiti was a good start.

–William Coupon

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