Robert Charlotte’s photographic exhibition “Odyssée Garifuna” is on view at Foudres HSE Habitation Saint-Etienne, in Gros Morne, Martinique. In her article « Que sont les Garifunas devenus? » [What have the Garifuna become?] Dominique Brebion (AICA Caraïbe du Sud) writes, “Robert Charlotte’s portraits are imbued with poetry, sensitivity, tenderness—removed from the standard up to date neutrality of the photo-document. What stays, past the sociological curiosity, is the great thing about the pictures.” Listed below are excerpts:
The end result of 9 years of photographic quest, Odyssée Garifuna—to be seen on the rails of Foudres HSE Habitation Saint-Etienne, in Gros Morne, Martinique—took Robert Charlotte to St. Vincent, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and from the east to the west of the USA, to fulfill the Garifuna individuals. Odyssée Garifuna narrates the rootlessness [l’itinérance] of this individuals, born of the fortuitous assembly of deported Africans and kalinagos from the Caribbean. Over the course of the travels he embarked upon to discover one of many much less valued—and even, little identified—sides of Caribbean identification, Robert Charlotte substantiates the urgency of understanding how a tradition evolves, endures, is transmitted or disappears.
The Caribbean exists due to a really sturdy cultural merging ensuing from “encounters” of various influences—African, Amerindian, European—producing new societies, wealthy in contributions and various forces however bruised by the violence of their historical past and typically left with out their actual (his)story. In my view, these lacks and sufferings actually forge a cultural richness, a everlasting quest for identification, but additionally a type of thought inevitably linked to the historical past of slavery. Among the many Garifuna, the refusal of the colonial yoke produces a tradition linked to a trigger, that of being free and remaining so. This sturdy strategy fascinates me and leads me to surprise not concerning the historical past of the Caribbean however concerning the histories of the area and their penalties, explains Robert Charlotte.
The format is elegant, dynamic, and refined. The scenographic alternative of alternating enormous two-by-ten-meter portraits printed on blue-backed paper and glued on to the wall like wallpaper and smaller framed diptychs supplies a rhythm to the entire. Thus, we see the very shut low-angle portrait of this shaman and author from Belize who appears to query the extreme blue sky.
The diptychs clearly clarify Robert Charlotte’s photographic standpoint and convey collectively pictures captured in numerous international locations, in numerous contexts, however linked against this or, quite the opposite, continuity. How does Garifuna tradition progress in numerous contexts? How did it develop from the St. Vincent cradle—womb of this individuals with an unique future, the place the unique language has already disappeared—to Belize, the place we discover the one surviving faculty the place all the pieces is taught in Garifuna? How does it survive within the very up to date context of New York or Los Angeles?
The unique posters imagined by the Atelier Agnès Brezephin-Coulmin completely replicate each the peregrinations of the Garifuna individuals and the lengthy photographic exploration of Robert Charlotte. They contribute to a greater studying of the inventive mission and attest to the care given to the coherence of the exhibition. [. . .]
How does Robert Charlotte reconcile the documentary need for a direct shot and the requirement of an ideal composition the place typically unconscious aesthetic reminiscences emerge? As André Rouillé says, between the actual and the picture there’s all the time interposed an infinite sequence of different pictures, invisible however operative, which represent themselves in visible orders, in iconic prescriptions, in aesthetic schemes.
I don’t depend on references to portray, though the method of establishing my images might resemble that of a classical portray. I’m pondering for instance of Horace Rodgers, The Farmer with Canine. It was raining that day, we have been in a shelter, on a farmer’s discipline in St. Vincent. A canine stored going forwards and backwards and sitting at his grasp’s ft. My gaze then rose to his face, inhabited by a mix of energy and gentleness on the identical time. The verbal alternate between us was established and I proposed to do his portrait. The rain didn’t cease and, as I used to be keen to finish it, I proposed to him to take the images below the rain. The rain then grew to become a component of the composition of the panorama. The sunshine of this foggy climate, the steep slope of the mountain, the tree and the animal within the background, machete in hand, the turban on his head and his canine, which adopted him.
Nearer to Raymond Depardon or Marc Pataut than to Henri Cartier-Bresson or Robert Frank, Robert Charlotte is as excited by individuals as in pictures. He says he talks so much throughout the pictures even when he and the mannequin might not share the identical language. It’s a query of building contact, of enjoyable the ambiance and the very set up of the cell studio which might set off a constrained and synthetic angle; the fashions are distracted in order to coax them and to permit the photographer to seize all topics of their reality, their authenticity, their delight.
I take the identical shot a number of occasions, in the identical place with the identical framing. Initially, within the viewfinder, there’s the panorama. Then I deliver the character into it with out systematically directing their angle. However, with the sight, I’m extraordinarily attentive to the expression of the face all through our verbal alternate. I seize the picture when the expression corresponds to the character, to the ambiance of the second, the place or maybe to my very own fantasies. It’s fast. I select the picture that gave me essentially the most emotion throughout the capturing. There’s little or no post-production work. The work on the sunshine is completed throughout the capturing. The contribution of digital gentle makes it doable to stability the variations in gentle and to densify the colours, explains the photographer. [. . .]
Excerpts translated by Ivette Romero. For full, unique article, see https://aica-sc.web/2022/06/13/que-sont-les-garifunas-devenus
For extra on the photographer, see https://robertcharlotte.wixsite.com/robertcharlotte00 and https://www.instagram.com/charlotterobert