IRA MATH­UR

This Sun­day’s Book­shelf fo­cus­es on Trinidad-born and based artist/pho­tog­ra­ph­er Abi­gail Hadeed, who has been doc­u­ment­ing Caribbean cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, the en­vi­ron­ment, and our peo­ple for over 30 years.

Hadeed tells me she is “an out­lier at heart, drawn to the over­looked: peo­ple on the pe­riph­ery, mun­dane ob­jects, flow­ers long past their bloom”. She is drawn to “tak­ing risks” with her pho­tog­ra­phy, to “stretch­ing to con­nect with oth­ers by shar­ing my hu­man­i­ty and vi­su­al lan­guage”.

At 60 (it was her birth­day yes­ter­day, No­vem­ber 4), Hadeed can look back on a dis­tin­guished ca­reer, hav­ing rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the 1998 São Paulo and the 2006 Ha­vana Bi­en­ni­als and hav­ing her pho­tog­ra­phy dis­played at the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of Light­Work, Syra­cuse, NY, and The Hood Mu­se­um, Dart­mouth.

In 2020, Hadeed re­ceived two ho­n­ourable men­tions for her work in the In­ter­na­tion­al Pho­tog­ra­phy Awards (The Is­land and I Are One) and the Bu­dapest Pho­tog­ra­phy Awards (Still Life Still Lives–Not so En­chant­ed). In 2021, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty’s Dark Lab­o­ra­to­ry award­ed Hadeed’s ‘War­riors of Hu­racán’ the first prize in pho­tog­ra­phy.

Hadeed’s work ad­vances con­cerns about the his­to­ry of the Caribbean, “a com­plex sto­ry of slav­ery, mi­gra­tion, mer­can­til­ism, trade, trans­porta­tion, trans­mi­gra­tion and alien­ation”. Hadeed says she “strives to put a face to what his­to­ry has de­nied, to in­ter­ro­gate the Caribbean re­gion at the cross­roads of an un­re­solved past and an im­pend­ing fu­ture”.

As a sto­ry­teller, Hadeed feels a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pho­to­graph our sto­ries from our re­gion’s per­spec­tive.

“As chil­dren of the ear­ly 60s, we were fed a con­stant di­et of the colo­nial per­spec­tive; at the time, it was all I knew. On my re­turn from study­ing pho­tog­ra­phy at the Art In­sti­tute of Ft Laud­erdale, I worked at the T&T Mir­ror. Kei­th Shep­herd, Raynier Ma­haraj and Raf­fique Shah ex­posed me to a Trinidad I found fas­ci­nat­ing and like noth­ing I had ex­pe­ri­enced. That was my jump­ing-off point to ex­plore my coun­try and the Caribbean.”

The fol­low­ing ex­cerpt is Hadeed’s state­ment on her process of tak­ing pho­tographs:

“There is a dif­fer­ence be­tween tak­ing a pho­to­graph and mak­ing im­ages. I cre­ate bod­ies of work which come from an in­tu­itive place. I take time be­fore mak­ing im­ages or cre­at­ing por­traits (which I’m now con­cen­trat­ing on) to re­search my sub­jects thor­ough­ly.

“Earn­ing the trust of my sub­jects does not dif­fer; hu­man be­ings must feel seen and known to trust in my ca­pac­i­ty to cap­ture some truths about their lives. Be­tween the ob­ser­va­tion and the pa­tience to al­low things to un­fold, the mag­ic hap­pens.

“My process is like the sea … flu­id and surg­ing. My work spans three decades of move­ment, from Trinidad steel­bands, tra­di­tion­al mas and the­atre to the in­dige­nous peo­ple of Guyana to Caribbean de­scen­dants in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, from the once out­lawed Caribbean spir­i­tu­al prac­tice of Ifa/Or­isha to my ever-evolv­ing pho­to­graph­ic re­sponse to wa­ter.

“These bod­ies of work, like bod­ies of wa­ter, are rest­less and on­go­ing. They change form and lo­ca­tion but re­turn to the source. I am that sea, calm but un­easy or swelling with rage, grief and de­sire. I am that woman grip­ping a short rope at the back of a boat, cam­era in hand, try­ing not to drown, reach­ing to con­nect all these el­e­ments with my lens, my gaze.

“My cur­rent process with dig­i­tal medi­ums is sim­i­lar to when I worked with black-and-white film. I com­pose in the cam­era and try vi­su­al­is­ing the im­age be­fore mak­ing it. I use pho­to­graph­ic soft­ware the same way I would make a print in the dark­room. I dodge, burn and tone my im­ages, on­ly now with a com­put­er. Most­ly, I avoid dig­i­tal ma­nip­u­la­tion or crop­ping, pre­fer­ring to use the en­tire raw file. I em­brace the flex­i­bil­i­ty of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy, es­pe­cial­ly in the wa­ter.

“Speak­ing to the iso­la­tion, forced still­ness and closed bor­ders im­posed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, I cre­at­ed my se­ries Still Life | Still Lives; Not so En­chant­ed. I used white bor­ders to mir­ror yet an­oth­er ex­pe­ri­ence of con­fine­ment, keep­ing each im­age sep­a­rate.

“The black film-like bor­ders around The War­riors of Hu­racán re­sem­ble my black-and-white im­ages print­ed in the dark­room. I filled out my neg­a­tive car­ri­er to ex­pose the edge of the film, in­di­cat­ing the whole frame. Al­though I val­ue the dig­i­tal ex­pe­ri­ence, noth­ing can match the mag­ic of see­ing a film im­age emerge from the de­vel­op­er. In the dark­room, print­ing is a sub­ver­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, much like go­ing un­der­wa­ter. The im­age de­vel­ops and sur­faces just as I emerge from be­neath the waves. There is some­thing tran­scen­dent and com­plete in the soli­tude and time it takes to cre­ate that unique im­age. I con­tin­ue to ex­plore ways to ap­ply that dark­room alche­my and sen­si­bil­i­ty to my dig­i­tal pho­tographs.

“I’m even more aware now than ever that my neg­a­tives, colour trans­paren­cies, prints and ephemera can­not con­tin­ue to be stored as they are. Archives are im­por­tant and record a time and era of life. Ana­logue and dig­i­tal archives re­quire cu­rat­ing, cat­a­logu­ing, digi­tis­ing and prop­er stor­age. Hav­ing worked con­sis­tent­ly for near­ly four decades, rep­re­sent­ed T&T at two of the world’s biggest bian­nu­als, Sao Paulo and Ha­vana, and my work col­lect­ed by ma­jor in­sti­tu­tions and mu­se­ums, I would like to be able to take care of this repos­i­to­ry of im­agery.

“As a so­ci­ety, we must ask our­selves why more at­ten­tion has yet to be placed on pre­serv­ing our her­itage. It’s al­ways the sole re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of artists or his­to­ri­ans to find ways of pre­serv­ing what they have cre­at­ed. Our in­sti­tu­tions fall short of that or any ac­count­abil­i­ty for be­ing the cus­to­di­ans of work in the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um. Or why is there not an in­sti­tu­tion for works cre­at­ed over decades of car­ni­val, steel bands, or de­sign­ers? What are we leav­ing for the gen­er­a­tions to come?”

–End of artist state­ment.

In 2022, Hadeed was award­ed a Mel­lon grant through its in­au­gur­al co­hort of Art x Tech Fel­lows for Dig­i­tal Junkanoo, the new­ly fund­ed lab as a part of the Di­as­po­ra Sol­i­dar­i­ties Lab (DSL) Mel­lon Grant for the fall of 2022.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian colum­nist and the win­ner of the non-fic­tion OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture 2023. (www.iras­room.org)