Leah Gordon

Kanaval: Vodou, Politics and Revolution on the Streets of Haiti

Leah Gordon is an artist and curator and has produced a body of work on the representational boundaries between modernism, religion, anthropology, post-colonialism and folk history. Her photographic work registers junctures between history, cosmology, modernism and the present. Haitian history, and not only that of the revolution, is replayed through the masks, costumes and narratives of the carnival in Jacmel, a coastal town in southern Haiti.

Leah Gordon has been recording the people, masks and costumes of Jacmel’s carnival for the last sixteen years on a 50 year old Roleiicord twin lens reflex camera. In a calmer, more tranquil, times she has met with the carnival performers and collected the stories behind the masks. These are stories of ancestral & revolutionary memories, complex Vodou rituals, political satire and personal revelations. The lives of the indigenous Taino Indians, the slave’s revolt and state corruption, are all played out using drama and costume on Jacmel’s streets.

From: http://www.leahgordon.co.uk/index.php/project/kanaval/

More on Kanaval series: http://www.redefinemag.com/2013/leah-gordon-kanaval-photography-the-arcade-fire-haiti-carnival/

Haiti’s Ghetto Biennale: http://artreview.com/previews/the_biennial_questionnaire_leah_gordon/