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)