CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/15/2023

Havoc and stardust in Bruce Gilden's 'Haiti'

Featured spreads are from Atelier EXB’s new, expanded edition of the 1996 Bruce Gilden classic, Haiti. Featuring 75 black-and-white photographs—more than half of which have never been published before—taken over more than 20 trips to the country since 1984, this embossed hardcover with tipped on cover image makes an indelible impression of a spellbinding island culture in constant upheaval. “In truth, a place in agony,” Louis-Philippe Dalembert writes, “where gangs have replaced the dictatorship in a macabre game; where the people, weary, now and then trade their martyr’s mantle for the blind vigilante’s robes. Where the elements have always chided with their own distress. A place accustomed to many and various catastrophes. This is how the foreigner sees this land. … And yet, you tell him, this country is hanging on to its last breath. Teeming, throbbing under the sun, sex aroused, bursts of life in mourning garb, relentlessly trying to mute the trumpets of death. Eppur si muove. And yet, the country is still going. In the eyes of the women and men who inhabit it. In the smiles of its children. In the hope deeply rooted in their hearts, which refuse to give up. Even backed up against the wall. In their songs. In their dances. In their everyday words. In their ability to swap the havoc of distress for stardust.”