Fete St. Yves: Beyond the Mountains
Photographer: Tony Savino
Exhibit Title: Fete St. Yves: Beyond the Mountains
Location: Haiti
Fete St. Yves, Vodou celebration, Anse-a-Voux, Haiti, May 2008
Tony Savino has been covering Haiti with his cameras since 1987, when he covered the first attempted elections after the fall of Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier on assignment for Time Magazine. Those elections were aborted, along with the Haitian people’s democratic aspirations, in a bloody military coup.
Savino continued to photograph the stormy political landscape, which was punctuated by more violent coups-de-etat and counter coups as Haiti’s ruling elite fought for control over the country. In 1990, a popular movement swept the nation, bringing a priest with fiery class and anti-imperialist rhetoric to power in the country’s first democratic election. The eight months that president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was in power saw the beginning of self-empowerment and an accelerated rate of popular organizing. This period came to an abrupt end, however, with yet another bloody coupe. Haiti, whose people heroically defeated Napolean’s army to create the first Black republic, were now caught in a period of changing administrations (including that of Aristide – temporarily brought back to power upon the guns of imperial power) which have become ever more dependent on and subservient to the neo-liberal schemes imposed by it’s northern neighbors. As Savino continued to photograph this political landscape, he became ever more interested in the cultural identity of the Haitian people. Voodoo, the synchronic mix of various west African traditions and Catholicism exemplifies that expression.
Tony Savino’s Haiti work has appeared in many domestic and international publications, including Newsweek, Life, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as the Aperture anthology, Haiti: Feeding the Spirit.
Tony Savino
www.TonySavino.com
tonyfoto1@yahoo.com
212.222.0928
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