Displaced - Haiti
On January 12, 2010 a massive earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince and other cities in the south of Haiti. About 1.3 million people resettled in encampments throughout the area. Two years later reports claim that about 800,000 have moved out of the camps, but mostly they return to crumbled homes or into the streets - ‘a return to zero’. Officially about 500,000 people still live in makeshift homes in very precarious, dusty, dirty displacement camps lacking proper sanitation and water supply. In early 2012 they were again faced with the prospect of spending another rainy season with tarps donated to them more than two years ago. Aside from the sheer poverty and lack of jobs people in the camps deal with security and health issues. The awful situation for these survivors has become the ‘norm’; people have formed communities and do their best to hold on to a semblance of organization and ‘normal’ life though each and every one’s dream is to move out of these slum-like settlements into homes. The following portraits were taken inside or outside of people's homes in displacement camps around Port-au-Prince.
The portraits in this series were made in February and March of 2012.
Thirty–year–old Elsy Joseph, front center, holds her three–month–old Donaldson inside their makeshift shelter in displacement camp KAMV, Port–au–Prince. Her husband, twenty–seven–year–old Donald Delasaint, holds their child Ichedson Delasaint, two, and stands beside their son Jeff Joseph, seventeen.
Seventeen–year–old James Merius sits twirling a shirt in his tent located in the foundations of a construction site near Delmas 17 in Port–au–Prince.
Venita Joseph is seventeen years old, nine months pregnant and living with her boyfriend in the Marianne displacement camp of Port-au-Prince. She sits on the bed in her makeshift home.
Bernadette Joseph stands in front of her temporary home in the Marianne displacement camp, her children behind her. A total of eight people live here including her kids aged 4-16 and her husband. Bernadette often borrows money to buy and sell anything for a living.
Cleda Louis stands in Port-au-Prince's Marianne displacement camp where she lives. She broke her wrist after a falling out of a car. It never healed correctly.
Marie Sonise Jean Louis stands in her makeshift home in a small displacement camp on a construction site at Delmas 17. She lives here with her husband and cousin and the three of them sleep on mats on the floor. They lost two cousins and most of their belongings when their home at Delmas 19 was destroyed.
Pierre Sony, a pastor and schoolteacher in the Delmas 2 displacement camp, stands in a space used both as a school and as a church. Pierre lost his sister, brother, and aunt when their home collapsed.
Fifty-three-year-old Inalia Dhaiti, seated in her makeshift home in the Acrano district of Port-au-Prince, holds a picture of her grandson who was born on January 12, 2010, the day of the earthquake.
Twenty-one-year-old artist Emil Joseph stands in front of his makeshift home in Port-au-Prince's Champs des Mars Square holding a conch he painted.
