January 16, 2004

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Images of Haiti

by Lia Steakley

E ven simple and tiresome chores in rural Haiti look enjoyable when viewed through the camera lens of Marie Jo Mont-Reynaud.

Endowed with a playful quality, her photographs make daily tasks -- going to the stream in search of water, or walking home from the market -- seem more like fun than labor-intensive work.

Entitled "People of Haiti," the exhibition is currently on display at Stanford Art Spaces, located on campus at the Paul Allen Center for Integrated Systems. It is part of "3 Photographers," a larger collection that also features Sandra Chandler's "Venice Carnevale" and Jeffrey Davis' "Path of Discovery." Mont-Reynaud is the first Stanford student to have her artwork shown at the Stanford Art Spaces gallery.

The freshman, who has documented daily Haitian life for the past three summers, first visited when she was a sophomore at Menlo High School. She had worked on several research projects about Haiti and was intrigued by the country's culture and history. Around that time, a representative from St. Joseph's Home for Boys in Haiti visited Stanford University looking for summer volunteers. After speaking to the orphanage's representative, she decided to embark on a month-long trip to Haiti to work at the boys' home.

However, when she arrived in Port-au-Prince, the capital city, the volunteer trip quickly transformed into a living lesson on Haitian life. She spent some time working in the boys' home, helping take care of the children, and spent two weeks at the St. Croix Hospital observing doctors on their rounds. Towards the end of the trip, she encountered an organization called the Peasant Association of Fondwa, and went to live with them for two weeks.

"I felt really disconnected from the people, because I was living in this guest house at the peasant camp that had running water and it was not really how the people of Haiti live," Mont-Reynaud said. "I wanted to be a little closer to the people."

Soon after, she met a native Haitian man who worked as a veterinarian for an organization called People to People, and he invited her to visit Latournelle, a remote village where he often worked. For three days, Mont-Reynaud stayed in the Haitian countryside learning about the daily life of the people.

It was during this first summer trip in 2001 that she discovered the art of photography.

"I started taking a lot of pictures, just to have them to show people when I got home. And other people would see that you had a camera and ask you to take pictures of them," she said.

When Mont-Reynaud saw the finished prints of her vacation snapshots, she realized that some went beyond being simple point-and-shoot photographs to revealing images of people working or playing. Coincidentally, that year she won a $500 history award and she decided to buy a digital camera for her next summer trip to Haiti.

"I never really had any training, so I thought that if I could take a lot of pictures and just delete the bad ones then I could learn to take better photos," Mont-Reynaud said. "I took about 600 pictures and some of them were actually good."

On the second trip to Haiti, she made arrangements with the veterinarian to stay with a family in mountainous Latournelle.

"We were lucky, because we knew this man who was willing to find a family for us to stay with and (he) was worried about the hygiene standards. So our house had a cement floor and a latrine, which was rare for most of the houses," she said.

The house was a simple wooden structure with a tin roof that housed 12 people. There were only three beds and the family graciously offered two of them to Mont-Reynaud and her mother. Mont-Reynaud followed the family and the children throughout the days helping with chores and playing with them.

"To get shots of real life, I just followed my Haitian friends everywhere they went, in everything they did, which resulted in many photos of hard work. On the lighter side, the time I spent with the younger children led to a different kind of photo," she said.

The lighter side can be seen in "She's Got the Whole World in Her Hands," which shows a little girl in a ragged pink dress holding a large inflatable globe with a carefree smile on her face. In "Running Water," five cousins make one of three daily trips to the stream to wash clothes and fill large buckets with water. Dressed in brightly colored clothes, they carry the vessels on their heads and hand-wash their laundry as they walk home through the hills. "While," a photograph of a teenager in a white dress with a deep red sash and red trim, walks home from the market with a new bright red bucket on her head.

"I took a lot of pictures of kids because I spent a lot of time with them. They got used to me very quickly so they weren't conscious of me taking their pictures so much and would be very natural," Mont-Reynaud said.

Some pictures look blissful on the surface, but have a darker layer underneath, she added. Case in point: "Beyond The Mountain," which shows two children gazing on the vast Haitian countryside, an infinite space of possibilities ahead of them.

"I look at this photo through a darker lens, because...I lived with these children, Destin and Jezilen. I know that they face an unforgiving landscape of insurmountable hills and future obstacles. In this photo, Destin and Jezilen are not just standing on the edge of the mountain; they are living on the edge," she said.

Intent on helping the people of Latournelle, Mont-Reynaud is donating all of the proceeds from the sale of her photographs to the village community. Last November, she won a $1,000 prize from Sakapfet, a Miami-based Haitian organization, and used the earnings to purchase pigs for rural Haitian families. She donated the remainder to a literacy program.

But Mont-Reynaud understands that change means more than sending money.

"If you do want to make a change, then you need to understand the culture and what the peoples' life is like," she said.

What: Marie Jo Mont-Reynaud's "People of Haiti." The display is part of the larger "3 Photographers" exhibition that features Sandra Chandler's "Venice Carnevale" and Jeffrey Davis' "Path of Discovery."

Where: Stanford Art Spaces, located on campus at the Paul Allen Center for Integrated Systems, near the corner of Via Ortega and Campus Drive West. A smaller exhibit is on display at Stanford's Law School Reading Room, but can only be viewed by holders of Stanford IDs.

When: Through Jan. 22 at Stanford Art Spaces. The gallery is open weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Cost: Admission is free.

Info: Call (650) 725-3622 or visit http://cis.stanford.edu/~marigros.

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