Visualities
Josué Azor
Haiti -
June 23, 2020

The secret and queer life of the Haitian night

In Haiti, the word noctambule speaks of a night inhabitant of clandestine activities. Pursuing that idea, the photographer Josué Azor goes through the queer night of Port-au-Prince and portrays it with the naturalness of the initiate. “The more photographs I take, the more the community teaches me about what freedom is and what it is to take risks,” he says.

As part of a larger series, the images presented in Africamericanos show what is truly resistant to the encounters between bodies that occur in devalued spaces, sheltered by the night. 

“The nightlife that interests me is not necessarily that of a nightclub,” says Azor on his blog. “I focused on the night that looked gross, a night where I would meet people I might not normally meet in my life. That was one of my parameters.”

“I started going to parties and was fascinated. The first thing that touched me was that what happened at parties was different from the external fantasies about those meetings. I have not been to parties where there was debauchery. There is definitely a certain freedom that some people give themselves to be someone else or to be themselves, to express themselves in a way that they would not do outside of these environments.”

Focused on documentary, artistic and social photography, Josué Azor began traveling in 2008 around Haiti to combine his passion for photography –which he learned self-taught– and his interest in the religious practices of his country, focusing particularly on voodoo culture that documented in the city of Gonaives.

His professional work began after the earthquake of January 12, 2010. “Before the disaster, I was an amateur photographer,” he says. “The professionals I knew more or less put me on the road. From then on, I abandoned my studies in administration and other activities, and I deeply immersed myself in the art of photography. ” 

Azor participated in the 2nd. Changjiang International Photo and Video Biennale 2017 and Photo Meetings of French Guiana 2014. In Noctámbulos, the artist explores the nightlife and the LGBT community of Port-au-Prince with the purpose of making these scenarios visible. He is a member of Kolektif 2 dimansyon (K2D), a collective of young photojournalists and visual artists based in Haiti. 

Etiquetas
Africamericanos  /  Haiti  /  Josué Azor  /  queer
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