The Heart of Haiti

More than two centuries since enslaved laborers of West African descent evicted French colonials from Haiti's troubled republic, the second-oldest in the western hemisphere, the lot of rural Haitians has changed little. Life is tied to the exhausted land, worked with hoe to the cycle of seasons. One's world is that which can be taken in from the top of the highest mountain. The Artibonite Valley is one such microcosm, in the geographic heart of Haiti, where a river's liquid artery sustains 200,000 inhabitants on subsistence farms. Materially poor but rich in culture, the Haitians live with dignity in the face of deprivation, find solace in a spiritual synthesis of voudoun and Christianity, and season their talk with trenchant proverbs.
Andrea Baldeck came to know this world as a volunteer physician on several trips to the valley's Hopital Albert Schweitner during the 1980s, returning as a photographer in the mid-90s with the opportunity to see the valley and interact with its people in a new and more extensive way. In permitting their images to be taken they were giving much, and in their faces they revealed much - hope, resignation, forbearance, pride, strength, and love.