Couple in Voodoo Trance

This sublime image has turned up on a number of blogs including Royal Quiet Deluxe and Lucky Charm (I was alerted to it by Drumz of the South twitter feed). The photo was taken by Weegee - as the photographer Arthur Fellig (1899–1968) was known - and was featured in an exhibition at the International Center of Photography a few years ago. Weegee was a Jewish immigrant to the US from Ukraine, and is best known for his portrayal of life in New York. So I am guessing that this 1956 photo, entitled 'Couple in Voodoo Trance', was taken in the States rather than in the Haiti homeland of Voodoo (or Vodou).

What is striking is the calm dignity of these participants - who could be dancers anywhere - quite at odds with the racist caricature of Vodou as some blood-crazed evil cult. Such caricatures have sadly been getting quite an airing in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, most notably from right wing US Christian fundamentalist nutjobs like Pat Robertson, who blamed the earthquake on a pact between Haitians and the devil. Clean Living in Difficult Circumstances is among those who have taken these views to task.

Haiti: all the tears and all the bodies

In today's Observer, Arcade Fire's Régine Chassagne, whose family fled Haiti to escape the Duvalier dictatorship, writes about the earthquake: 'Somewhere in my heart, it's the end of the world. These days, nothing is funny. I am mourning people I know. People I don't know. People who are still trapped under rubble and won't be rescued in time. I can't help it. Everybody I talk to says the same thing: time has stopped. Simultaneously, time is at work. Sneakily passing through the cracks, taking the lives of survivors away, one by one'.

She urges people to donate to Partners in Health, which provides free health care to people in Haiti.

Here's Arcade Fire's song Haiti, set to film shot there a couple of years ago by CryptoBioMayhem:



Haïti, mon pays,
wounded mother I'll never see.
Ma famille set me free.
Throw my ashes into the sea.

Mes cousins jamais nés
hantent les nuits de Duvalier.
Rien n'arrete nos esprits.
Guns can't kill what soldiers can't see.

In the forest we lie hiding,
unmarked graves where flowers grow.
Hear the soldiers angry yelling,
in the river we will go.

Tous les morts-nés forment une armée,
soon we will reclaim the earth.
All the tears and all the bodies
bring about our second birth.

Haïti, never free,
n'aie pas peur de sonner l'alarme.
Tes enfants sont partis,
In those days their blood was still warm