#sexypink/Photographer

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SEXYPINK - Trinidad and Tobago Photographer Abigail Hadeed’s recollections of her photoshoot with Black Stalin. Her curiosity and genuine desire to capture her own culture produced these stunning portraits.

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Abigail Hadeed on Photographing the Stars

“We Can Make it IF We Try” In the Mid 80’s I started photographing traditional mas and the steel bands in and around Port of Spain. I was young, in my early 20’s with a passion and desire to learn and explore Trinidad and it’s culture. 

On my own I began to explore South East POS, Laventille, Belmont and the panyards the traditional mas camps, Minshall, you name it I did it.  

 followed my instinct and allowed things to unfold. At the time I did not have a plan and or know that 3 decades would just fly by and along the way I had and have worked with the Regions best and greatest. I have much to be thankful for, being born at the time i have, the people who let me in, and the spaces and people that fed my soul.

 The Black Stalin was definitely one of those memorable shoots at the studio on Long Circular Road.  Black Stalin circa 1991

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Sexypink - “A Suh It Guh”, a photographic retrospective of Marina Burnel, a Kingston-based French photographer whose work is inspired by the city and the people who call it home.  Far away from her home in Normandy, the overt sensory overload of Kingston’s concentrated culture inspires her philanthropic and artistic manifestations.  Idealising her raw and natural aesthetic, she deviates from the traditional, displaying her works on aged zinc, wood, and clay, exploring beauty through the broken. This retrospective showcases the past eight years of her journey through Kingston.  

She explores the complexities of modern Jamaican society with the backdrop of a rich world influencing culture. What better place to enjoy this journey than through the Kingston Railway Terminus, which was built in 1845 and continues its very own journey into the 21st century. 

This show is presented in association with the Jamaica Railway Corporation at The Kingston Railway Terminus located at 142 Barry Street. 

 This event is free and open to the public Saturday June 10 and Sunday June 11 from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Secure parking is available at the station. 

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Sexypink - Rubadiri Victor captured some excellent behind the scenes images of The Making Of Carnival KINGS & QUEENS. I think that there is a picture book in the making here.

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Sexypink - The striking works of St Kittitian Wayne Lawrence.

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Sexypink - From the Facebook page of Colin Gill. Fibreglass, wire, bamboo and pure unadulterated passion.

Stage costume photographed by Anthony Keung Fatt 

From the Facebook page of Antourage Production

KING :     JOSEPH  LEWISPORTRAYAL:   UDEVELI OLUHLAZA - THE HAUNTED JAB OF CANBOULAYCATEGORY:     FANTASYBAND:     ANTOURAGE PRODUCTIONSDESIGNER:     VARMA LEO LAKHANBAND LEADER:     SHELDON LEWISBUILT BY : COLIN GILL, SHELDON LEWIS, JOSEPH LEWIS, LEO LAKHAN AIR BRUSHED BY: RONALD RAMDINBorn from the tears of slavery, from eyes reddened and ready to seek revenge, he appears - summoned by the cries and rhythm of a nation. Seeking justice and payment for the enslavement of his people, he charges forth with a rage like the flames of cannes brulee. Although the haunted Jab is feared by many, he is most certainly and rightfully respected from all. The drums start to beat, the horn start to… It is time to celebrate freedom. Our freedom! The freedom of the people in Trinidad and Tobago. The spirit of the Jab is all around us. Give your dues to the devil or suffer his wrath for there is no other way to quell his vengeance. "Pay the devil JAB JAB" ... or pray he has mercy on your soul.This magnificent Creation was designed by Varma Leo Lakhan and Built by Colin Gill, Sheldon Lewis and Varma Lakhan. Colors used are Blue, Red and Gold.  Carried on three wheels, the costume stands at a height of 35ft, width of  30ft and a length of 20ftq. Materials used on this Dynamic Costume are fiber glass, aluminum rods, cane, wire, sequins, fabric, foam, metallic foil and plastic Molding. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Joseph Lewis back to defend his title as the King of Carnival with his portrayal of "Udeveli Oluhlaza" - the Haunted Jab of Canboula

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/UGvw9M2CY04

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Sexypink - JACQUELINE BISHOP, writer and visual artist, born in Kingston, Jamaica, and who now lives and works in New York City. She has held several Fulbright Fellowships, and exhibited her work widely in North America, Europe and North Africa. She is also an Associate Professor in the School of Liberal Studies at New York University.

On one hand, the market woman/huckster is the most ubiquitous figure to emerge from plantation Jamaica. Yet, as pervasive as the figure of the market woman is in Jamaican and Caribbean art and visual culture, she remains critically overlooked. In this set of fifteen dishes, I am both paying homage to the market woman—centering her importance to Caribbean society from the period of slavery onwards—and placing her within a critical context. In particular, I place the market woman within a long tradition of female labor depicted in diverse imagery that I have sourced online, including early Jamaican postcards, paintings of enslaved women from Brazil, the colonial paintings of the Italian Agostino Brunias, and present-day photographs, which I collage alongside floral and abolitionist imagery.

I work in ceramics because all the women around me as I grew up—my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother—cherished ceramic dinner plates. These were centerpieces kept in one of their most important acquisitions, a specially made mahogany cabinet. To fabricate the plates, it is important that I am working with Emma Price, a British ceramicist based in Stoke-on-Trent in the former Spode factories. In the realization of the series, that connection imbues them with a meaning that shows the long and enduring relationship between England and Jamaica. For that same reason, British Art Studies is a fitting venue for their first ever publication and partner to create an accompanying film exploring the plates and their themes.

Though the likenesses of none of the women in my family are represented in this series, centering the market woman is my way of paying homage to my great-grandmother Celeste Walker, who I grew up knowing very well, and who was a market woman/huckster/milkwoman par excellence. Celeste was born in the tiny district of Nonsuch hidden high in the Blue Mountains in Portland Parish on the island of Jamaica. Her mother died on the way home from a market, when my great-grandmother was too young to even remember her face. In her adulthood, while my great-grandfather farmed the land, my great-grandmother was the huckster who could easily carry bunches of bananas and baskets of food on her head; the market woman who travelled to far away Kingston to sell in Coronation Market, the largest market on the island. She also hawked fresh fish, and prepared and sold coconut oil, ginger beer, cut flowers, and cocoa beans that were pounded in a heavy wooden mortar. I remember her in my childhood as the milkwoman waking very early in the morning and walking through the district selling fresh cow’s milk. The tradition of huckstering would be passed on to my grandmother who relished the role in her older years. My hope in doing this work is to give much respect to the market women of the Jamaican and larger Atlantic world who have fed, and continue to feed, nations. The market woman is the defining symbol of Jamaican and Caribbean societies.

My work integrates the mediums of painting, drawing and photography to explore issues of home, ancestry, family, connectivity and belonging. As someone who has lived longer outside of my birthplace of Jamaica, than I have lived on the island, I am acutely aware of what it means to be simultaneously an insider and an outsider. This ability to see the world from multiple psychological and territorial spaces has led to the development of a particular lens that allows me to view a given environment from a distance. Because I am also a fiction writer and poet as well as a visual artist, the text and narrative are significant parts of my artistic practice.

Oftentimes I utilize a process of competing narratives to have the viewer participate in the creation of meaning. In my “Folly” series I recount a story I heard as a child, of two tales of a “haunted” house. In time, I researched the history of the house and through a process of photomontage combined photographs I took with archival footage to try and tell the two stories. The ghostly images of the past occupants are integrated into the walls and on the grounds of the present-day ruins. The overall effect is spectral and haunting. I also used this process of photomontage in an ongoing series of ethereal and transcendent “Childhood Memories,” in which characters are often split between heaven and earth. There is a palpable sense of loss in these images as characters seek to inhabit a time and a place long gone.

The “Babylon” and “Zion” paintings are about the Rastafarian ideas of Babylon being a place of captivity and oppression while Zion symbolizes a utopian place of unity and peace. In the Babylon series, I write the lyrics from songs and poems to create text-based drip paintings leading up to the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” in which I use popular dancehall posters to evoke the inner-city Babylonian “walls” of Kingston. The Zion series is comprised largely of monochrome paintings to delineate this symbolic paradise. Glitter is present in these works not only as a representation of the paradise that Rastafarians seek in the Biblical homeland of Zion but also as a commentary on the ‘bling and glitter’ culture that has enveloped much of Jamaican society. Consequently, my work is very much engaged with helping me to understand my heritage.

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Sexypink NEWS - Helen Humphrey was an amazing performer of Minshall costumes (back in the day) she has passed away, but shall never be forgotten.

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From Minshall’s Facebook page

We pay tribute to Helen Humphrey who was Venus Rising in Minshall's 1978 Zodiac. The design by Minshall was based on Botticelli's Birth of Venus. Helen's mas was photographed by Roy Boyke at Macqueripe; and these photos are from the Trinidad Carnival magazine published by Key Caribbean. We extend deepest sympathy to John Humphrey and the rest of Helen's family.

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SEXYPINK Reviews: I went for a drive and Never Came Back - Tracey Johnson

(Solo show) LOFTT Gallery Roselino Street Woodbrook

October 6 -20th 2023

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A ditty of Bruce Springsteen and the title of a recently completed Solo show by the prolific Tracey Johnson at Loftt in Woodbrook discusses a restless spirit. Springsteen croons ‘ride, and never went back, Johnson, ‘drive, and Never Came Back’.

Whatever the lyrics Miss Johnson has single handedly shown why going to Art shows matter. Her Hyper Realistic, Expressionistic Abstractions are thought provoking masterful works. 

Her technical skills are so on point that as you stand next to her girl smiling or red devil, it takes a few seconds for ones thoughts to wrap around the fact that these ARE NOT photographs.

Even more so, her decision to deliberately toy with reality by blurring, marking and splattering heightens the delightful drama on the canvases.

For example her egg drop sun and black drizzle over the La Basse image could be gimmicky in any other hands.

Miss Johnson triumphs here by instinctively being in synch with every single brush stroke she renders. She gives just enough shift from Realism to Fantasy as can be seen in Maracas beach where her sun is a child’s playful scrawl.

What I appreciate most about I went for a drive and Never Came Back is its unexpected candor on life in the tropical paradise that is Trinidad and Tobago.

Overlaying frenetic markings on captured moments, defining the happenstance of one’s input like a diary or a witness to the mundane (beauty) likened to the simplicity of  driving on a dark night - is all done with an ease, an exceptional understanding of painting. It is a comprehension fraught with the discipline of getting out of the way and letting the energy come forward as she does - not simple or easy at all.

Everybody has a hungry heart, Springsteen sings and Miss Johnson’s heart beats for us in her work. One of the most impactful shows of 2023 so far. 

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Sexypink - New work from Vincentian Artist and Photographer Nadia Huggins.

Sexypink/ Nadia Huggins

Sexypink - Save the date.

Sexypink - Hurricane Waters: Climate, Destruction and Community

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Sexypink - Photographer Maria Nunes captures the spectacle.

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Sexypink - We’re excited to welcome PAMM’s Caribbean Cultural Institute's (CCI) newest Fellows Shannon Alonzo, Farihah Aliyah Shah, and Petrina Dacres.

This next group of fellows represents the diversity of the region with their unique backgrounds and artistic practices.” – PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans.

Our 2023 CCI Fellowships is a curatorial and research program supported by the Mellon Foundation and in collaboration with the Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA), fostering art projects and research advancing Caribbean art and scholarship.

Learn more about PAMM CCIs' Fellows and program ☝️ https://bit.ly/3PGPSMC

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Sexypink - I am giving insight into a project begun in 2016 and then shelved after three years of intense work with the great Trinidad and Tobago Photographer Richard Acosta. Inner Sanctum:Artists Studio was conceived based on one too many parents believing that their child disappointed them by choosing Art as a degree and a possible career.

Images of Peter Sheppard in his studio in 2016

Inner Sanctum, Artists' Studios is a full colour photo-book which delves into the little known creative process and spaces of fine artists from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It features 20 of Trinidad's most prolific painters who have been exhibiting work for about twenty years. The book has a special focus on the creative spaces of artists whereby no two studios are ever the same. An attempt is made to draw insight into the correlation between an artist's creative space and process to their work.

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Sexypink - Earlier today I mentioned the heat in Trinidad and Tobago. Little did I suspect that a volcano of an Artist had passed. How can anyone wrap their mind around the passing of Sir Horace Ove? Where shall the next genius come from? Will we experience them in our lifetime again? The wisest course of action is to honor his work by showing it, talking about it and encouraging future generations. To his prolific Artist son Zac, deepest sympathies on the loss of your father.

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Sexypink - A page from the style guide. Amanda T McIntyre looks at the Baby Doll anew.

The Making Dolly Mas Carnival Arts Workshops started two weeks ago and my heart is full. There is so much precious talent among the students. At the end of one session, a girl said, “I want to be a contemporary Baby Doll.” Imagine my pride! This is a term I introduced to the vernacular through reflective essays and lectures. The girls have been writings speeches, building costumes, and choreographing. Trinidad and Tobago Carnival is in good hands. Thanks to the teachers and parents who have been facilitating this dream of mine!

Photographer: Robert Schittko

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~Sexypink~ See more here...https://www.blackflorida.org/the-project

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~Sexypink~ A wonderful project from the Photographer Nadia Sanowar.

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Title: House #141 View high resolution, larger image here: http://bit.ly/2mmo2Ky Photography Products & Prices:http://bit.ly/2JZQPwB 20% of all profits from the sale of my photos are donated to Sponsoring Wings of Hope a non-profit charitable organisation in Trinidad.