With the Lord Mayors parade taking place in Belfast today i thought i’d post a photo from a parade i saw in Leogane Haiti which was the closest town to the epicentre of the Jan 2010 earthquake. On Easter Sunday i was taken there ostensibly because i wanted to flavour some of the local Rara music. What i wasn’t told was that every year the town holds a parade which commemorates the history of Haiti, from the first slaves arriving, through the years of slavery and subsequent rebellion ending with a group carrying placards expressing their current concerns. All age groups of the community were involved and the parade had been very carefully choreographed and planned. I don’t hesitate to say that it was the best parade i have seen. Here a member of the paramilitary police force, who had been standing idly by whilst the young bucks of the town were enacting the years of slavery, decided to try some crowd control when the young women paraded past him.
Photographer and visual artist based in Belfast.
I have facilitated community based workshops with groups as diverse as visually impaired individuals in Dungannn, Travellers across Northern Ireland, Young Offenders and many community groups across Belfast.
My work has exhibited extensively here in Northern Ireland in group and individual shows and has been shown in North America and i had my first solo international exhibition in New Zealand. I have been the recipient of a number of grants from the Arts Council Northern Ireland.
I’ll be blogging about Arts and Culture, primarily in Belfast
check out www.moochinphotoman.tumblr.com
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