——— SERIES ———
LA FEMME DES REVENANTS
We see differently because we are different. The objective of Caribbeanist Photography is not merely to adopt or mimic conventional ways of seeing that simulate power, and then to creolize them. Rather, the objective is to incorporate, complicate, and ultimately relegate those powers to the periphery. Caribbeanist photographers have enough to do as it is: struggling for who struggle to be seen, deriving our vision from the tenuous traditions that have forged us and those we see, navigating the irreconcilable distances and silences between us. If we are, in fact, beautiful and dangerous (and we are), we should know that it is a hard-worn beauty, a danger tempered with grievance and blood, rebellion and failure. Our way of seeing gives us leave to note the visible silences caught in the still life of frozen eyes and blackened mouths, the pains of aging locked in shadowed wrinkles too old to dance in the light. (How their translucent edges glisten on the asphalt!) With the lens, we seem to dance a dance for the seen and the unseen.
—PORT OF SPAIN, 2015
Tracey Sankar securing the knot on the headtie, to which the horns are sewn. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar and husband Shervaun Charleau, who was murdered later that year. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar’s hands. White paint everywhere, on hands and body, and fabric. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar on hands and knees, taking on the hoof. First in a series of four. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Sankar taking on the hoof. Second in a series of four. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Sankar taking on the hoof. Fourth in a series of four. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar waits, composing herself for the Traditional Mas Competition. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar and her beads, a crucial element in reverence to Erzulie Freda, the Haitian Vodun deity and syncretized patron of La Diablesse. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar, dressed and possessed, waits to approach the staging area for Traditional Mas Competition. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar and husband Shervaun Charleau take a moment to chat as they wait for her number to be called. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar, La Diablesse, with anonymous man in background. Traditional Mas Competition. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar laughs (at me) before Traditional Mas Competition. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar, after her Dimanche Gras performance at the Queen’s Park Savannah. Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar as La Diablesse, with daughter Nathaniel Charleau as a Dame Lorraine. Mardi Gras. South Quay, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar, leaving the Traditional Mas stage at Victoria Square with a last look, dragging her chain behind her. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Carnival 2015. Tracey removes the hoof after her debut performance of La Diablesse, unbuckling the shoe she had modified for a kind of authenticity. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.
Tracey Sankar, after removing the hoof, struggles to compose herself. Victoria Square, Port of Spain, 2015.