Haiti Seen Through My Lens
A photo essay exploring the beauty and complexity in my backyard
Most days, I spend my time crunching numbers and staring at an Excel spreadsheet as the project manager for Partners In Health’s CDC/PEPFAR grant in Haiti, my home country. I spend half of my time in the capital of Port-au-Prince and the other half traveling throughout the country to check on the progress of HIV and tuberculosis work supported by Zanmi Lasante, as PIH is known locally.
I grew up in a privileged community in the urban, upper middle class neighborhood of Petion-Ville, along the eastern hills bordering Port-au-Prince. But I’ve come to know rural Haiti more intimately over the course of my five years working with PIH. In my free time, I slip away to document the beauty and complexity of my home country as an amateur photographer.
The following selection of images are aesthetically pleasing, but they also hold deeper meaning about socioeconomic struggle, well-intentioned foreign aid gone astray, and the fluidity and arbitrary nature of borders. These images reveal slices of everyday life in Haiti that most outside observers, I’d wager, have never seen. Welcome to Haiti.
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