The People's Salon

Champ-de-Mars is  a central parc for the metropolitan region of Port-au-Prince.  The “people's lounge” - as called in Haiti - is also a place of symbols for the glorious past, referring to the history of the country as a whole. The very singularity of Champ-de-Mars is that it is, above all, a digest of Haiti, i.e. a space where all the daily problems of the country crystallize, a space where struggles rise, give outcome or get swiped down. Every succeeding head of state has always tried to stamp his own imprint onto Champ-de-Mars. The public square capitalizes innumerate entreprises for change. This project combine archives and new photographs to tell the story of this dynamic place, a popular courtyard for both leisure and confrontation with the governments.

Smeared Flag (2019)

The history of the rainbow flags on the walls of Port-au-Prince dates back to June 2018. Canapé-Vert road users had wondered about this flag that was discovered at random one morning. The work quickly disappeared. Tagged with homophobic insults, the wall in question was repainted clearly immediately. Seven months later in the metropolitan area, there is no escaping it. On the walls of major busy highways. Delmas, Pétion-ville, Bois-Verna, Babiole and now Petit-Goâve. A situation that does not fail to react refractories. Crosses, insults, allusions to Sodom and Gomorrah, made with the bomb appear systematically on each new flag. This series presents a palette either the language of homophobes facing these flags in public space.

human moult (2016)

This work is intended to be a restitution of the life of Haitian returnees from the Anse-à-Pitres camps during the past few months. Relocated last April 2017 by IOM, the former undocumented immigrants from the Dominican Republic left behind in the tents that served as their homes for almost 10 months, their old clothes, objects and litter of consumed products. "Remnants of an existence they shed away from. Like snakes that change their skin, clothes can speak of a type of life and the bodies that have inhabited them." More than 587 families of irregular Haitian immigrants fled the Dominican Republic under threat in June 2015 after the PNRE. They returned to the southeastern Haitian border and until recently lived in makeshift camps near the town of Anse-à-Pitres.

C-19 Haiti work in progress (2020)

The Covid-19 pandemic, which had been plaguing the world ever since January, reached Haiti at the end of March. Following the confirmation of 2 infected cases, the Haitian government, mimicking other foreign governments, recommended confinement, imposed curfew and declared a health emergency.
For decades, no politicians inspire trust among the Haitian population due to constant corruption scandals and to their incompetence to remedy the successive economic and social crisis. In the framework of the covid-19 crisis, the consequences are twofold. First, people in general is no longer gullible to the government announces and denies the very existence of the virus in Haiti. Secondly, there is a spate of frictions between the
population and the state armed forces when it comes to impose the necessary sanitary measures. It is to expect the worst from the mix of fatalism, disbelief, obvious lack of health infrastructures and ongoing insalubrity in Haiti.

L'oubli pour mensonge (2017)

Between October 2 and 4, 1937, the towns in the northwest of the Dominican Republic experienced the “Persil Massacre” . On the orders of the Trujillo dictatorship, Haitian immigrants and nationals are hunted down and then killed with knives by Dominican soldiers. According to some historians, more than 20,000 Haitians perished. A few months after the ignominy, Presidents Sténio Vincent (Haiti) and Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic) find an arrangement and prevent the Dominican Republic from diplomatic and regional sanctions. More than eight decades later, this genocide, known as the "Parsley Massacre", remains unrecognized by the Dominican state, as the last survivors die. Portraits of these survivors, places of memory and the legacy of a silent pogrom.

Chanje miwa (Voodoo dress)

Haiti's voodoo enthusiasts are not the rich, as we all know. This often means that detractors of this religious practice often question the rationality of spending rituals. Often exorbitant in relation to their standard of living. Among the obligations of expensive rituals, the dress of rituals. Almost every year the voodooists make the effort to have new dresses made in the colors and in anticipation of the new feasts of gods that are coming. It is a practice that is part of a sort of tradition of Haitian sapology. A game, not to get rid of an opponent, but rather to gain the favor of gods. Creativity is at the rendezvous, women and men alike every year revisit fashion, European and African colonial influences. Creations that will feed others next year.

Portraits

Mario Benjamin
Me. Jacques Letang
Rasoul Labuchin
Erol Josué
Jeudi Inéma
Katiana Milfort
Bonel Auguste
Béo Montout
B-Bird
Daphné Ménard
Sachernka Anacasis
Estalov Trofort
Éliezer Guérismé
Fitzgérald Muscadin
Adler Jean Pierre (Bòs Madichon)

Toro La Cou (Summer 2020)

Every year at Easter, the heirs of the Rara musical group “Toro La cou” barely manage to pay the musicians and thus honor the ancestral tradition. That, to bring the group to downtown Léogâne and thus defend the colors of Acul, their small village. The increasingly insane competition and the expenses it implies made 2017 particularly difficult for music lovers and chauvinists Acul citizens. Toro La Cou, this beautiful community of destinies put to the test of an increasingly expensive life and of competition in search of extravagance.

Crédit 
Camera: Louvenson Saint-Juste, Réginald Louissaint, Pierre Michel Jean
Sound : Jeannis Bazelais
Editing: Stéphane Vernet Augustin
Color correction : Stéphane Vernet Augustin

Sans titre, histoire d'un mardi de janvier

When the 2010 Quake hits Haiti, Pierre Michel is just a 2nd year law student who enjoys filming his friends on their way to a college anniversary ceremony. A day of laughter and great joys, which for him and his comrades, in a few seconds will turn into a nightmare and will mark them forever. A camera that shows the before and after of lives that are about to change. More than ten years later, remembering this day Pierre Michel asks himself one and the same question to which he and his friends will try to find an answer.
Director: Pierre Michel Jean
Production: Kolektif 2D, Iman Communications

Protagonist : Pierre Michel Jean, Donalesson François, Frantz Socrate Sainsmyr, Cémélus Francis, Pierre Junior Joseph

Archives : Pierre Michel Jean, Donalesson François, Cémélus Francis, Frantz Socrate Sainsmyr

Camera:
Jeanty Junior Augustin, Pierre Michel Jean

Sound : Estaïlove Saint Val
Caméra: Estaïlove Saint Val
Lights: Richardson Registre
Editing: Stéphane Vernet Augustin
Color correction : Stéphane Vernet Augustin
Audio mixing : Roudie Rigaud Marcelin

Les guérisseurs de l'ombre (2015)

“Les guérisseurs de l'ombre” is a film on the para-sanitary system for cure people in use in the Haitian suburbs for decades. He proposes through three characters who we could call healers, a certain Haitian conception and way of life which results from the deficiencies of the state structures. A nurse, a pastor and a voodoo priest are all that Georges Georges, a suburb nestled in the mountain upstream of Port-au-Prince, counts as health staff. "

Crédit
Camera: Louvenson Saint-Juste, Pierre Michel Jean
Sound : Pierre Michel Jean
Editing: Melky Leroy, Stéphane Vernet Augustin
Color correction : Stéphane Vernet Augustin

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Pierre Michel Jean is a Haitian photojournalist & film director
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