Climate Change: An Eastern Caribbean Journey

Last August, one of my post-Hurricane Maria images - "Heading Out" (see below) - won a photography contest hosted by the OECS Commission and GIZ (the German Corporation for International Cooperation). The theme of this competition was "Human Mobility in the Context of Climate Change" and my images from that time in Dominica's history seemed to fit perfectly.

"Heading Out" - the winning image of the OECS/GIZ Photography Contest, 2020

The Exhibition

Being the winner of the competition, I was slated to be the featured artist at the photography exhibition that had been planned to showcase work from around the Caribbean. However, since the COVID-19 pandemic curtailed travel and large gatherings, the organizers were forced to pivot and what had been meant to be a traveling exhibition was converted into a virtual exhibition.

Last Friday we launched that exhibition, via a public Zoom call. I was one of the panelists and gave a 5-minute introduction to my images. I think I did pretty well, except that I forgot to end by asking viewers to visit my website 🤦🏿‍♂️

Fellow Dominican and photographer/filmmaker, Michael Lees, was also on the panel. In total, work from 8 Dominican-based artists are on display at the exhibition: Ayeola George, Derek Galon, Garvin LeBlanc, Shadrach Burton, Marica Honychurch, Sarama Rolle, Michael and myself.

Here's a link to the exhibition.

Post-Hurricane Maria Images

When I got wind of the competition last year, I was in the process of sorting through and editing my post-Maria images. For many, this was the first time I had taken a really close look at them.

It was my intention to publish the body of work as a book, however I scrapped that idea for a couple reasons:

1. I did not feel like my images showed enough of Dominica at that time to warrant an entire book.
2. Publishing a book is an expensive venture. I still have several copies of my first book that I'd like to sell first (although the pandemic has significantly slowed sales because I can't ship them out of Dominica at a reasonable cost.)

I will probably include the best of these images in a future book, as a special section, as opposed to doing a separate publication. However, in the meantime, I'd like to share some of these images with you. 

Rather than make you sad or mournful, I hope that seeing these images make you proud of how far Dominica has come after been devastated by a record-breaking hurricane. 

Please check out these images and let me know what you think with a comment below!