THERE IS NO CITY ANYMORE

February 2014, Port au Prince (Haiti)

Photos and videos by Gianluca Orrù (Tekla Video, Torino)

“It has been five days since we arrived at the St. Foyer St. Camille mission in Croix-des-Bouquets. We have seen very little. Moving from one place to another isn’t easy.
Dust, walls, barbed wire. White people hidden behind walls. Only a few tarmacked roads. Ruins and rubble everywhere. Crumbling, unsafe walls. Glass shattered by the earthquake, unstable arcades. Very little has been rebuilt. The famous Presidential Building has been demolished. On the roadside, people sell practically anything from market stalls along Route Nationale #1. On Sundays, people wash their cars and motorbikes. Above a layer of trash that covers the ground. I have yet to see a foreigner walking among Haitians on the streets of this capital city.
We have travelled only marginally through what is known as the poorest and most dangerous place in the Western Hemisphere: the Cité Soleil slum. We have filmed very little with a GoPro. Trying not to be noticed by eyes which are anything but friendly. Lots of raised middle fingers. Although we have covered around twenty kilometres, we have not seen a white person. There is no city at all here, nor a capital, and I wonder if there ever was, before the earthquake on January 4th 2010. I don’t know whether I will be able to paint where and how I had wanted to. The perception of danger is very high.”