HAITI
Bruce Gilden
HAITI
Photographs: Bruce Gilden
Text: Ian Thomson
Publisher: Marval
100 pages
Year: 1996
Price: 90 €
Comments: Hardcover under dust jacket, 33,5 x 23,5 cm, b&w photographs. First french edition. In very good condition other than traces of use and edgier on the dust jacket. Design: Yolanda Cuomo. Text in French.
" A canopy of woven rushes serves as the roof of the voodoo temple. Inside, a paraffin lamp casts a faint glow on a representation of a serpent with a sinuous body. This is the symbol of Damballah Wedo, the patron saint of rain and rivers. Very soon he will be speaking through the mouths of the possessed, hissing like a reptile. And other voodoo spirits - the loas - will descend to earth. Dressed in a red surplice, the voodoo priest sweats, his body jerking. A woman spins around frantically, then freezes and comes to a halt. The drums start to play, louder and louder, more and more frantic, while the priest holds up a white cockerel flapping its wings above the crowd. The drummers strike their instruments violently with rapid hand movements; the outstretched tips of their clenched fingers seem to fly. The faithful fall to the ground in a circle to the rhythm of the music, while the priest brings the sacrificial bird to his mouth and prepares to slit its gullet with his teeth. The next morning, a headless rooster lay in the middle of the temple, its legs gracefully curved in rigor mortis. A solitary dog sniffed with interest every nook and cranny of the sacrificial site. The priest emerged from a hut brandishing the reptilian image of Damballah. He greeted me in the morning tradition. "And how did you sleep? I replied in true Haitian fashion: "No worse, thank you.""
- Excerpt from Ian Thomson's foreword (translated from French)
more books by Bruce Gilden
-
Go (Signed)
by Bruce Gilden
sold -
Italians (SIGNED)
by Bruce Gilden
Euro 90 -
Go (NUMBERED AND SIGNED)
by Bruce Gilden
sold -
BEATEN & BLOWN BY THE WIND
by Bruce Gilden
Euro 400 -
Haiti (First edition)
by Bruce Gilden
Euro 90
more books tagged »american photography« | >> see all
-
SOEURS, SAINTES ET SIBYLLES
by Nan Goldin
Euro 65 -
Witness Number One
by Stephen Shore
Euro 40 -
One Picture Book # 60 : Crooked Cracked Tree in Fog (WITH A SI...
by Todd Hido
sold -
Vagabond (Signed)
by Gaylord Oscar Herron
Euro 120 -
Social Graces
by Larry Fink
sold -
The Family Album Of Lucybelle Crater And Other Figurative Phot...
by Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Euro 50
Books from the Virtual Bookshelf josefchladek.com