Trinidadian photographer <PERSON> pays tribute to ‘Carnival dreamers and makers’ in new book · Global Voices
<PERSON> playing a Blue Devil in Paramin, Trinidad, 2014. Photo by <PERSON>, used with permission.
Visit Trinidad and Tobago during its annual Carnival celebrations and you are sure to see certain characters — Blue Devils, Fancy Sailors, <PERSON>, Moko Jumbies — and photographer <PERSON>, playing just as integral a role as the rest of the Carnival cast by capturing it all.
Now, some of her best pictures (and the magic behind them) have come together in a spectacular coffee table book, “In a World of Their Own”, which honours the “Carnival dreamers and makers” that <PERSON> has had the privilege and joy of photographing year after year.
At the April 24, 2018 launch, <PERSON> called the book her “ode to Carnival” and talked about the “immense gratitude” she felt while chronicling the adventures of “the incredible people who dream and make Carnival”. <PERSON> describes her work as “seeing from the inside”, a perfect encapsulation of the book's achievement as an insider's guide to Carnival traditions.
In the poetic words of <PERSON>, who penned the book's foreword, <PERSON> acts as both witness and historian:
To say these photographs have been snapped is to handle them carelessly: they have been made, fired in their own kiln of understanding […] The photographs listen. They contemplate. They return to the sites of Carnival innovation year in, year out. Then they record.
Many stalwarts of Trinidad and Tobago Carnival describe the festival as their “religion”; if so, <PERSON> has worshipped at its altar with awe, wonder and reverence, and her book allows us a peek into the splendour of the promised land. Global Voices sat down with <PERSON> to talk about “In a World of Their Own”.
Global Voices (GV): Prior to you taking photography by the horns and using it to chronicle some of the most compelling aspects of Trinidad and Tobago’s national festival, you were probably best known in the Caribbean as a golfer. How did a childhood hobby become your full-time job?
Trinidadian photographer <PERSON> with her new book, “In a World of Their Own”; used with permission.
<PERSON> (MN): I had been working in the golf world for ten years and reached a point where I thought it was time to move on, that I’d done what I could do. I’d played my part in some major projects while I was the General Manager of St. Andrew’s Golf Club and felt I’d made a real contribution; it was time to close that chapter of my life. I remember I had gone hiking one day, and taken my camera. The speckled light in the forest really made the photos come alive — that made a deep impression on me. Then, there was quite a specific moment in 2009 when someone I knew very well died in a terrible accident. 550
That really shook me up and made me ask myself some hard questions. The outcome was deciding that I would head off on my own into self-employment in photography. It was a very scary thing to do at the time. I really didn’t know how I was going to make it work.
<PERSON>: Enter Carnival. What did it have to offer and what have you learned from photographing it?
<PERSON>: From the time I first photographed Carnival [in 2007] I was captivated by all the colour, the creativity, the energy. Most of all I think the energy, the spirit of Carnival quickly drew me in. Carnival is such a vast, layered world. There’s so much going on inside that world. It’s full of so many interesting people. This is the greatest thing that Carnival has to offer — the people who dream and make mas’ [short for ‘masquerade,’ the creation of Carnival costumes]. There is so much history to Carnival and this is one of the things that I was immediately fascinated by, to learn that history, to dig deeper and deeper into it. Photographing Carnival has most of all made me deepen my interest in people. It’s made me want to go beyond the surface and really get to understand just how important the traditions in Carnival are to the bigger story of who we are in Trinidad and Tobago.
The cover of <PERSON> book, “In a World of Their Own”; used with permission. 495