On the Other Side of the Shore

This series of images comes from a photographic study titled Dlo Doubout (Sugar Cane), created by a collective of photographers. It explores the foundations and evolution of contemporary Guadeloupean society through the lens of sugarcane.For the first Indigenous and nomadic peoples from northern Venezuela, the Kalinagos, the sea represented, among other things, a source of nourishment, a means of movement, and ultimately a path to explore new spaces favorable to their development. In fact, they migrated to the Caribbean islands at the end of the ninth century.In the imagination of the writer Édouard Glissant, the sea is both a symbol of life and of death. Some cross it; others drown in it.Inspired by the House of Slaves on Gorée Island—a somber symbol of the transatlantic slave trade—this series of seascapes from the Guadeloupean archipelago was created using a large-format and medium-format cameras.The process of creating these images imposes a slow rhythm, unfolding in two stages. The first is the moment of capture, which, when close to the sea, places me in a meditative state. Then comes the time for image processing—I use an alternative photographic printing method called the Ware cyanotype.* This series, likely the beginning of a larger body of work, seeks to highlight the deep connection I have with the sea. The sea has always fed my imagination. Having spent part of my childhood on the island of La Désirade—two kilometers wide by eleven kilometers long—the sea was omnipresent, both visually and sonically.The aim of this project is to offer a different way of seeing and experiencing the sea. Not as a space of leisure, nor as a cemetery—a metaphor inherited from the traumatic period of the Middle Passage, experienced by Caribbean peoples of African descent—but rather as a symbol of Renewal and Hope.