Here’s the little preview video I put together form last years footage (and Laurel’s song).

Oh, and one more from the wonderful and talented Michael Wilson…

It’s been a banner year, and I’m so very grateful. Putting together this highlights reel was a bit cathartic– almost surreal– as I thought back through all of the projects and places that this year has taken me. Dozens of shoots, 13 countries (if I’m counting right), and a broad range of stories. Frankly, I’m overjoyed and humbled. And I’m so excited for what 2012 has to offer.

90% of what you see in this little piece are from the last 12 months.

Here’s to another adventurous, inspiring 12 months!

I recently worked for the incredibly innovative More Media alongside photographer Eric Ray Davidson on a behind-the-scenes shoot for Mr. Porter & Details magazine. Check out these videos and then head over to Mr. Porter and buy some clothes! We interviewed Jackson Rathbone (of 100 Monkeys and the famous Twilight series), musician Gary Clark Jr., Marc Kushner of Architizer.com, and Max Lugavere & Jason Silva of Current TV.

See more at DETAILSInsider.com/MRPORTER

Thanks to Lane Wood for his producing efforts.
I worked closely with photographer, Esther Havens, on this project.
Thanks to Neil & Dave from Warby Parker for bringing me in on this project.
Music by Balmorhea.

Head over to Warby Parker’s site to buy pair.

Well, I’m still releasing this today but definitely at (literally) the eleventh hour. I’m up in the mountains for a shoot and thought for sure that I would have had Internet before now.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. This project was born in late January of this year. It took a month and a half to plan, a single day to shoot, and now six months to finish. In a lot of ways I was exercising creative muscles that I’d not yet used and it was an incredibly rewarding growing experience to make.

I was overwhelmed from the beginning to have such amazing talent- Tyler Riggs and Suvi Koponen. Go ahead, google them. They’re rockstars in the fashion world and were incredibly versatile actors. As I mentioned, it was a one day shoot which is a very short time to shoot such a breadth of content and they were fabulous– braving the freezing cold Chelsea piers and sitting in lukewarm bathwater for an hour and a half. Not to mention they were a delight off camera.

Also a million thanks to Janelle Wible who produced this with me. Without her selfless efforts I never would have finished it (or started it for that matter).

Below are the rest of our amazing crew. I will add links to all their work when I have better internet but in the mean time please google them because they all have amazing personal work. Thanks a million to all of you! Without your belief in this project and selfless dedication the day of, it wouldn’t have happened.

Enjoy.

Talent: Tyler Riggs, Suvi Koponen
Executive Producer: Janelle Wible
Music: Son Lux, The Silver Boys
Stylist: Dawn West
Makeup: Virginia Linzee
Second Camera: Nathan Smith
Assistants: Evelyn Rivera & Lily Fan
Set provided by: Andrea & Ira Lippke
Wardrobe provided by: Vera Wang & Native Son
Additional wardrobe provided by: Sonia Rykiel, Quail, Apolis, Lekuin, Okuta, Velvetine, & Mina Ro Mina
Special thanks to: Next Models, Red Model Management, Medium Concepts, LuxCartel

This post is a little self-indulgent… It’s not that I assume every image in this post is going to blow your mind (ha) they just represent a collection of images from my weekend under the towering redwoods with my good friend Eric and I couldn’t sacrifice any of those moments. So deal with it! (Double-ha)

My life is loud. Most of it, whether in New York or not, feels New-York-paced. Often I catch up on sleep in planes, taxis, and trains. E-mails are answered in transit, and much of my post-production happens while burning the midnight oil. With September and October comprising the busiest season of my year, and this year being the busiest I’ve yet had, I cherish any moments of rest I can get.  Sometimes these times of rest fly by all too quickly. I think it’s my state of mind. If I sit in silence and let my mind go wild with what I could be doing and need to get done, rest is anything but restful, and speeds past me before I can shut my eyes and feel the breeze.

However, last weekend after a shoot in Napa I drove my rental car (convertible – yay!) down through the valley, past the Bay, and up into the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains. My 48 hour hiatus with Eric was exactly what I needed and we filled it to the brim with laughter, soulful conversation, delicious food, and time around the fire under a blanket of stars. Because it was so deeply restful and I released the rushing world that I live in, it crept by slowly and sweetly.

While I was in India a few weeks back I had the opportunity to have a similar time of rest. While relaxing on the cliffs hanging over the waves that crash against Western India, I read 100 pages of journals from the last 4 years. I meditated on my journey, the Goodness of the God I believe in, and hope for the future. Thought I’d share a few words from 4 years ago in Southern Thailand if you care to read. Otherwise, skip to the goods below…

“Outside the gray clouds shove their way greedily over the blue jagged mountains of the southern Thailand. The Krabi airstrip is desolate, surrounded by lush vegetation that extends for miles in all directions.

Meanwhile, here I sit. My California home is still an eternity away. I am completely isolated. I imagine myself as what I am—a tiny, organic speck, like a bacteria or microbe, squirming about on the giant face of a huge blue-green sphere that pummels through a black darkness like an orange being tossed into the night sky.

I arrogantly assume the trophy position of the modern human: independent, free-standing, mobile. Mobility is my pearl of great price. It is my loftiest treasure, my trump card, my fountain of youth. My island-of-a-self slides carefree across the planes, mountains, and oceans of the globe. I absorb what I can of the cultural atmosphere around me, mostly I just watch. I peer, as though my body moves without my will, through two blue-green eyes. My legs cover ground, my hands exchange money and purchase bus and boat tickets, my feet grow calloused and brown in my sandals, my shoulders peel from the unrelenting sun, and inside this shell I continue to examine the world that I’m crawling across.

The whites of people’s eyes slide across my retina. Their bodies—of many varying tones—are a blur. Their garments simply swim around the sea of eyes as though they’re being painted onto the canvas around me. Each set of eyes, blinking, determined, aged, have seen a lifetime. The rise and fall of the sun, daily. The pain and joy alike boil in the stew of glistening pupils. Each eye is its own tiny planet, sliding through the universe of our smoggy world, gathering the dust of the past millennia. They rest daily, wrapped in skin and eyelashes, if only for a break from the data-flow. If only to ignore the dirt and grime of humanity long enough to become sufficiently numb to it, to reawaken anew, and then gather more information. A death here, a massacre there. A birth in India, a slaughter in North Korea. A kiss in Laos, government collapse in Sudan. A loving whisper in Denmark, a car bomb in London.

Can I please shut my eyes for longer than one-third of it all? Let me sleep infinitely, awakening only long enough to gaze into an orange sunset, or a star-filled sky. Let me light my view only with the sweetness of things, and collapse my window shades at the faintest chance of an eclipse of my golden sun.

Or should I stare weary-eyed always. Sleep only when death forces it. Stare red-eyed into the filthiness of it all and never blink. Will my mind allow it? Will my eyes dry with the raw air of human suffering?

Will grace allow me to gather these thoughts, this wisdom, this darkness I never should have seen, and sort each vision, like an encyclopedia, bringing forth each page, one at a time, to examine it under the finest of microscopes. Will I find, after my sight is blurred from staring day and night at those twitching microbes, a hint of beauty and hope under each membrane?

Science or Religion, whichever brings me the proper answer. Or maybe something in-between the two. Something I can’t put into words because if I did it would slide readily into either end of the spectrum.

If science were prose, and religion were poetry, each on violently disperate ends of a long rope, what great work of the human psyche would occupy the center? A song? It would be too much poetry. An equation? It would be too much prose.

If making the choice between the two, I choose the indecipherable. I choose it not because it isn’t unknowable– it is very much knowable. But it isn’t knowable like something you read in a book. It isn’t something calculable. It’s like the flutter of the heart at the sight of a lover. It’s like a long and beautiful sorrow—gray like a rainstorm, with silver light around the edges. It rises and falls like emotion, and shutters, twisting and turning, like a kite in the wind.

It comes and goes, because it’s ever-presence would numb you to it. It is a whisper. It is a deep rest and an infinite un-rest. It is tension and contraction of the muscles of your soul at work, unweaving the great and terrible mystery, pouring light into a dark void, and, when you’re blinded by it, dimming it so you can properly see the visceral and tangible reality around you.”

I’m short on words that can describe my recent trip to Samoa. It was simply an incredible experience.

I was raised in a family where the girls watched football while my dad and I took naps on Sunday afternoons. And when football was watched, it was all about the green-and-gold because my mothers family is from Wisconsin. But this recent trip with Troy Polamalu and 40+ other football players, coaches and family has made a lifelong Steelers fan out of me.

Troy was returning to the land of his family after 10 years of absence. His reception in American Samoa was not different then what a beloved King returning home from exile might receive. The week was filled with football camps, banquets, cultural ceremonies, and Island adventures.

For me it was definitely an exhausting trip – and I came home with over 30 hours of footage. But it was also exhilarating and emotionally moving.

One of the highlights of the trip for all of us was the players singing hymns in a 600-strong Samoan choir– songs that would break out unexpectedly throughout the football camps. Below this text you can listen to a clip of it. So moving.

Other highlights include an emotional trip to the Starkist cannery, and jetting around the bay on skidoos filming a longboat race.

In this post is a grip of stills I grabbed from the piece I put together for ESPN alongside Wild Hair Media. That piece is also below, or you can watch it here and check out the photos taken by Chris Baldwin as well as the story written by Carmen Thompson for ESPN the mag.

I love it when worlds collide. In fact, that has been the focus of my career over the last four years: to document irony, and the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate ideas.

I spent this last week in American Samoa with Pittsburgh Steelers Safety, Troy Polamalu, along with his family, and a mixture of NCAA coaches, NFL players, and Nike reps. Troy made a splash on the island as it was his first time returning to his homeland in a long time. The week was full of football camps for the local high schools, and a stack of other events that left us all completely exhausted by the time we left. Although I was brought on to create a documentary about the trip (which will be forthcoming), I did take a few photos here and there. Literally what you’re seeing in photos are pretty much all I took. However, I captured about 30 hours of footage, and am so excited to begin piecing it together.

Well, it’s been a while. Silence… sometimes it’s a good thing, right? Today I’m excited to share something I’ve been sitting on for a couple months now… As with pretty much everything I work on, it has taken me about 5 times longer then I expected to get this project wrapped up. And I’m not totally done yet – but I’m close enough that I’m ready to start leaking some fun images. The project (in a nutshell) …

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The amazingly talented Tyler Riggs (of RED) and Suvi Koponen (of NEXT) paired up for a short fashion editorial film by photographer and filmmaker Adam Sjöberg. The power couple honed their acting skills in a small-scale production short film based very loosely on the filmmakers own experience with two of his close friends, a young husband and wife, who spent 6 difficult weeks in the hospital that tested their relationship and faith. Tyler and Suvi, a couple themselves, were a perfect match for this project and brought an enormous amount of freshness, talent, and honesty to the set. Both exhibited an incredible knack for acting and for channeling their own experiences to create what is sure to be an intimate, beautiful, visually compelling story of loss and forgiveness. Sjoberg had an incredible crew working with him including make-up by Virginia Linzee, Styling by Dawn West, second camera unit by Nathan Smith, producer Janelle Wible, and generous loans from the closets of Vera Wang, Native Son, and Apolis Global among others.
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I have a bunch of people to thank. Deep breath. Here we go. First of all, to Janelle Wible, my dear friend and free-lance producer who took on way more then she bargained for. Suvi and Tyler were both incredibly good sports (Suvi sat in lukewarm bathwater for 2 hours and stood in the freezing cold wind on the west side in March in just a dress and light jacket). Tyler clearly has such an incredible natural talent and instinct for acting and it was such a pleasure to work with them both.

My dear friend, Nathan Smith, was combination PA and second gun on the shoot and shot some of the stills you see in this post as well as some of the behind-the-scenes shots I’ll be posting later. He’s a rockstar.

My team: make-up and hair by Virgina Linzee. Styling by Dawn West. You ladies are both rock stars. Thanks to the Lippkes for letting us use your beautiful space for a good chunk of the filming and as base camp. And thanks to the following clothing companies for generous access to your closets (I’m sure I’m missing someone, so sorry in advance): Vera Wang, Native Son, Apolis, Quail.

Such an amazing and stretching experience. I’m still wrapping up production (ahhh! I’m so swamped) but will have more updates and the final film very soon.

Below is a list of film stills. Soon I’ll have a grip of production/behind-the-scenes shots. Enjoy.

-A

Music. Well, that’s the video below. Publicity. It’s been a good couple weeks for me – with a New York Times shout-out, an interview on the BBC program “The World Today,” Glamour Magazine, Vera Wang, and Martha Stuart. And then work. I’m always busy but always aware that I’m blessed to be doing work that I love – and with great people (images below and above are of Nate Smith and Denise Cermanski at a recent shoot in Tribeca).

The videos I’ve been posting of “Fauxchella” are a part of a long-term project – a music film tentatively called “The Sound and the Wind.” Not sure when that will be wrapped up, and I don’t feel any pressure to set a deadline on it as I’m just too consumed with all the projects at hand (including a short film entitled “Stay” which I’ll be sharing about within the week). In the mean time, enjoy the consistent leaking of videos until the final piece is put together. You can check out additional videos on my Vimeo album for the project here.

A couple of months ago I had the privilege of traveling to Ventanilla outside Lima, Peru with some good friends from New York and the organization, Alegria. I’m currently working on a short documentary for Alegria from our time there, but in the mean time I’ve put together a short teaser.

Enjoy the teaser, and then head over to Alegria’s website to learn more about the great organization.

Last year when photographer/blogger extraordinaire, Laurel Dailey, of Blinking Against the Brightness, visited The Big Red Apple, I was exhausted of taking photos, and took nothing but a few piddly iPhone photos. This year, I do not think she could complain about how well-documented her trip was. And as to it’s overall success– A++ in my opinion. Laurel and I have been long time friends, and have always connected primarily through the imaginative adventures and photo-safaris we find ourselves on.

One of the days (out of 13) that she was here, a group of us zip-carred up to Cold Spring for a pretty amazing/magical/sun-filled day by the river. Check it out…

I had the honor of traveling with Alegria to Peru a couple of weeks ago.  I spent 5 wonderful days documenting the work that Alegria is doing in an orphanage called “La Communidad” in the mountains outside of Peru.  It was a lot of work that week keeping up with shooting cinematography and photography, but it was such a blast and such a meaningful experience.

Below you can check out some of my favorite photos. MTV has chosen to feature Alegria and some of my photos at an exhibit in their offices. You can check out that here. Look forward to a documentary to come!

You can check out the full story here.

And please check out Alegria – they’re a great new organization.

A few previews:

Read/view while listening to Blind Pilot.

Yesterday was one of those travel days where everything goes wrong. I should have been westbound on a plane from MKE to LGB that would have had me in before noon with a rental car awaiting me on my arrival. But because I missed my flight it ended up looking a lot more like this: Bus from MKE to ORD, 3 hours of waiting, flight to Charlotte, North Caroline, more waiting, long, boring, endless flight to LAX. No rental car. Metro trip from LAX to Long Beach. All told, it was a 15 hours travel day.

This morning is a lot more peaceful. I’m using the time difference to my advantage and I’m sitting at my usual Long Beach spot – Portfolio coffeehouse. It’s 7 am and it is COLD! I’m wearing a sweater and denim shirt and still the cool air catches me off guard when the door next to me pops open. It’s making me so excited for New York fall weather.

Yesterday my sole entertainment on my cross-country flight was the latest issue of DETAILS magazine. Let me just say that I read every piece of text there was to read in that thing purely out of boredom. One of the articles was a one-page interview with Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy. Now don’t get me wrong, Seth is a comic genius (maybe just purely a genius) but we do not share the same worldview. One of his comments caught me off-guard: “Carl Sagan said that we are ‘significance junkies.’ We love to attach patterns to everything we see. Not everything has meaning to it. I can’t afford to let it turn me into somebody who suddenly believes that he’s being watched over by a higher power. It’s kind of arrogant; that’s a lot of bandwidth for whoever is up there to have to maintain at any given time—Andy Dick alone would take up so much time and energy.”

It’s within my personality to make connections. In my mind – probably to a fault – everything has meaning. Everything is connected. Even my long day of travel was filled with meaning: creative ideas I wouldn’t have otherwise had, personal thoughts I wouldn’t have realized, people I wouldn’t have met. For instance, I met a woman sitting next to me who was en route to visit her estranged daughter and son. She had a fascinating and heartbreaking story. I couldn’t help but think, as I usually do, what if I hadn’t been on this flight? I would never have had this interaction.

Sitting twenty feet from me right now is a man named Fred. Fred is my personal prophet. I’m kind of kidding, but kind of serious. He’s an older man that reads the paper at Portfolio nearly every morning. And sometimes he ropes me into conversation and usually tells me incredibly profound things about my life. And then I won’t see him for a year and then we’ll pick up where we left off the last time.

Today I’m too tired for prophecy so I’m avoiding eye contact. But Fred is one of those people that, had I not had the first interaction, I wouldn’t probably not have continued to have this bizarre, fascinating relationship with the man of the years. A string of interactions linked back to one latte and bagel and Thomas Merton reading session where it all started.

I guess despite Seth’s words, and despite my (possibly) over-imaginative propensity to find meaning in everything, I can’t help it. Because I believe in God, and believe he has a purpose for us, the meaning is there. I don’t have to pull it out or connect links… it just rises to the surface.

The photos in the post were from a year ago in August. My screen on my camera was broken at the time and I accidentally overexposed all of the pictures so I pretty much discarded them… However, I revisited them yesterday and found new hope in them. They’re more contrasty (woah, blacks) then usual, but I kinda like how they’re sort of a mixture of moody/dark and light/ethereal.

Day 5

At around 3:30 AM Ben woke me up from my spot in the back of the truck. Incredibly groggy, but only a little stiff, I climbed out, pulled on my shell to warm up, and followed him into the main compound of Villa Creole. Ben was trying to utilize the time in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep to use the minimal (and usually crowded) wireless signal that was available. We needed to figure out transportation and a method of getting cash in so we weren’t helpless. Most importantly for Ben, however, was his responsibility to get his own mother to safety. I could tell this weighed on him, and the longer we stayed in Haiti, the more I felt his urgency to make sure he got her out and to safety.

While Ben used the internet, I pulled a couple of table chairs together, still aching for a few more hours of sleep, balled up to keep warm, and caught a few more winks. After an hour or so of relatively restless sleep– I’m pretty good at sleeping anywhere, but I guess everyone has their limits– I sat up and chatted with Ben. We reminisced about the last couple of days. We talked about the little boy, about his severed foot, his helpless parents. We talked about Doug– our loyal companion who has, to say the very, very least, a lot of personality. We talked about what we could do to begin getting ready to get Ben’s mother out of Port au Prince and safely to the States. We talked about what we could do for Haiti once we returned.

As dawn crept in, dreary-eyed journalists and doctors began slowly emerging from all areas of the compound– some from tents, others from hotel rooms, others from under blankets in the grass. As they had the mornings prior, the doctors rose early, ate whatever food they had with them, stuffed their day-bags, and headed out with the morning light to work, many of them at General Hospital.

The sky turned from cool blue to pale pink-and-orange, and the hotel staff brought out a meager complimentary continental breakfast. I was incredibly grateful for hot coffee (regardless of quality) and juice, yogurt, and some pastries. It seemed so far out of context, especially after days of mostly consuming Clif Bars. I went and alerted our Haitian brothers, who were emerging from sleep and from the truck outside, that there was breakfast. And though part of me felt guilty how accessible these amenities were for me, and how inaccessible they were for the many outside, I poured myself a cup of coffee, grabbed a pastry and cup of yogurt, and sat down with our “crew,” watching the sun slowly fill the compound with light.

One of the first orders of the day, for Ben and I, was to find a way for Doug to get back to Santo Domingo. It had become clear that his resources were depleted as well as ours, and he wasn’t any good as a rescue worker unless he was able to get back to Santo Domingo and receive aid from the people in his organization back home. He was also a real challenge of personality, and Ben and I decided that for the rest of the trip, we would accomplish the most by breaking away.

Throughout the past several days I had tried my best to be patient with Doug’s temper-tantrums, wild-goose-chases, hyperbolic self-acclimations, and awful bed-side manner. But it was really Ben that seemed to have the patience of Job. Often when Doug was being difficult, I was fuming, but Ben would quietly appease Doug, or seemingly acquiesce to many of his complaints. I understood that, at least at first, Ben felt a loyalty to Doug. It was Doug, after all, that had orchestrated (ahem, conned) his way, along with Ben, onto a plane that brought them in from Florida so that Ben could get to his mother.

But by the morning of that fifth day, Doug had pulled his last antic– even for Ben. And Ben had what he referred to as a “come to Jesus” talk with Doug. Essentially, he shot straight with him. And it was bizarre the impact it had. Instead of retaliating, or throwing a fit, Doug was agreeable. He had no resources, was low on money, and would go back to Santo Domingo where he could contact his people and regroup. Now the only challenge would be getting him there.

Discouraged that we wouldn’t be able to find a way home for Doug, but feeling a sense of responsibility to make sure he made it home safely, we asked around at the now-bustling compound if anyone knew any options for getting back to the Dominican Republic. Somehow through the early part of our search, Doug had befriended some people from The Christian Science Monitor, and before we knew it we were putting his stuff in the back of their large van, and were sending him off with hugs and waves. I don’t think he really wanted to go, because he must have said good-bye four times. Once or twice the door to the van would shut, the engine start, and then our hearts would flutter as Doug would emerge again to retrieve something else he’d forgotten, hug us goodbye again, and then climb back into the van.
But sure enough, by nine o’clock in the morning, we waved and watched the van filled with our friend and the correspondents from The Christian Science Monitor bounce down the road. Ben and I secretly wondered if the nice people on their staff would toss Doug onto the highway after an hour. But we trusted their patience and generosity and went back to the compound, smiling, relieved, bathing in the morning sunshine, and made plans for our day.

We decided that the best option for our driver, his truck, and the rest of our companions, was to send them on home to their families. They had been hired to travel with us up until this point, but we had no money left to give them, and no specific work to offer them. Ben and I would be alright, could find transportation, and had a wealth of resources at Villa Creole that we had access to. So we said good-byes, gave hugs, and watched as they rounded the curve away from us, back to their toppled homes.
Back inside Villa Creole, I cradled another cup of coffee and discussed the days’ plans with Ben, Simon, and a couple of young French reporters. I had a strong urge to go straight to General Hospital to see if their was anything I could do to help there. Another contact of mine, Jakob, who was a Swedish photographer from New York, had been sending me status reports from the hospital. He told me that he’d been able to help the doctors, and they generously allowed him to take pictures as well.

Simon and the two French reporters, who had been working as a set of three most of the week, had already been to the hospital and were making plans to head out into another part of the city. Both of the reporters were on assignment, and Simon, who was in Haiti independently, primarily stuck with them. The compound was pretty well cleared out by ten o’clock. Most of the journalists would work out in the city through late morning and early afternoon and would return by late afternoon to transmit their photos and stories back to their editors.

Short on cash, and pleased at the thought of a nice long walk, Ben and I decided to head down to General Hospital, a few miles away at the bottom of the hill, on foot. I left my big backpack at the front desk of the hotel, packed my day pack with everything I would need for the day including a water-bottle, Clif-bars, my camera, and few other odds-and-ends. I walked down the stairs, past the fallen foyer, the stairs to the second floor dangling above me, and into the bathroom that had been okayed for visitors to utilize.

I looked in the mirror. I don’t know that I’d seen my real reflection in several days. I look haggard. My sinuses were stuffed with exhaust and dust, and there were dirt circles accenting my sleepy-circles under my eyes. I had faint stubble, and hair like Peter Pan’s. I had pulled on a clean white t-shirt for the day, which was at the moment the only thing making me look even remotely presentable. I splashed water on my faces, brushed my teethe, scrubbed out some of the obvious dirt marks, and headed back upstairs.

My plan was to meet Jakob at General Hospital in one hour. The walk was down-hill, but we were unsure just how far it was. An hour? Two? Before we left the hotel compound I handed Ben one of my favorite vintage t-shirts– “No Guts no Glory”– and we ripped it into rags for him to use as a face mask. I had been using the same t-shirt I had torn up my first day in Port au Prince and it had been serving me well. At that we headed out like bandits down the hill.

Taking a long walk through the city was a unique and compelling way to survey the damage. Most of the time one could watch the horrifying scene from the safety of a vehicle. Viewing everything from inside a car gave a false sense of protection, and a very real sense of separation. With a window between you and the fallen bricks and broken people outside, you could watch but not be involved.
Along the way we stopped periodically to chat with locals. One man was selling giant tortoise shells. I stopped and ask if I could take a picture of him with the shells. He struck a dignified pose.

The winding road down the hill from Petionville affords a truly magnificent view of valley below. As we walked, Ben told me about the Haiti in which he had grown up. Although Ben had been born into incredibly meager conditions, he seemed to have mostly fond memories of his childhood in Haiti. After his mother transported him to New York, he had returned often and was always treated like a prince by his family. For those of you well-traveled in the third world, you know there is no feast like the ones prepared for visitors from afar.

Our walk was in some senses light– we laughed and retold the same stories about Doug. As big-hearted as he apparently was, it was such a relief to have the liabilities he carried off of us. Ironically, now with no truck, drivers, or cash, we felt freed to actually help.
But as we walked we also bore further witness to the massive destruction of the city. We walked past one collapsed building after another. Everywhere there were signs that said, “Nous avons besoin d’aide” — “we need help.” As we climbed over crumbled cinder blocks, splintered wood, and exposed wires, we walked past a small cement building that had remained relatively intact. It was sandwiched between two partially collapsed structures, with the spray-painted scrawling in English “God is good.” It reminded me of Ben’s mother the previous day who, on our return home from our long day as a make-shift EMT crew, threw her hands in the air and said in English “Thaaank you God, thank you!” waving her arms. I also remembered the early morning praise songs. I wondered if I’d have had the same perspective in the face of such adversity. Truly, I admired the strength of their faith.

Partially because of the condition of the road, and partially because of our frequent stops, the walk down hill took far longer then I imagined. Jakob, the Swedish photographer, was texting me that he was getting ready to take off. By the time we arrived at General Hospital, he was gone, and the gates to the entrance of the overcrowded compound were packed with Haitians pleading their cases and begging to be admitted. Some had family members with urgent needs, other just hoped that they would get some water or food.
Their hopes were likely in vain as I later discovered that water inside General Hospital was scarce both for the patients who desperately needed it, and the medical staff that were at risk of getting dehydrated as well. Ben and I managed to work our way through the mass of people to a narrow opening in the gate where a few bewildered U.S. soldiers blocked our entry, informing us that the press was being evacuated and no more people were being allowed in without some kind of identification as medical personnel. We told them we were there to help, not take pictures, and they hesitantly acquiesced.

As could be expected part of the hospital had completely collapsed– in fact the nursing education building was flattened. We were told that more then a hundred young nursing students had been crushed. The horrifying smell of the bodies inside wafted throughout the nearby facilities.

Parts of the the hospital complex that had been deemed sturdy were being used as operating rooms, and pre-op and inpatient units. Most patients that weren’t been currently treated were placed outside, where a miniature tent-city had been formed to shade them from the blazing mid-day sun. What formed over the top of the maze of dilapidated hospital beds was a massive network of blankets and tarps, strung with ropes to trees and poles, forming a collective quilt of meager covering.

Ben and I split up and agreed to meet back at the front in few minutes once we’d surveyed the scene. I walked through the constant crowds of people and took in the whole scene. I stopped a couple of times to take a few pictures, but for the most part kept my camera in my bag. Sure enough, journalists were slowly being pushed out. I watched an Australian news crew conclude an interview with a doctor who was clearly in a hurry to get back to his patients. I watched some photographers steal some pictures of a few desperate Haitians, who looked up with big eyes that said, at least in my mind, “Fine, take a picture. I don’t even care. Just take your picture and go.”

One journalist particularly caught my eye, however. She was kneeling alongside her translator at eye level with a patient. I didn’t catch the exact conversation, but her mannerisms with the young man were sincere. Every once in a while she’d tilt her head and say something to the patient, and then look to her translator. The young man would answer and she’d jot a few notes down, hardly breaking eye contact. After what seemed like a great deal of time, she finally lifted her camera and made a gesture that said, “May I?” He nodded, she snapped a couple photos, glancing up at him between shots.

That, I thought, is how it’d done. Make the personal connection. Give them dignity. And ultimately, give them the option to opt out. I realize this isn’t always plausible– and some would find me naive to think that it’s really ever plausible in such circumstances. Maybe that’s true. But it’s ideal. And the interaction not only impacted me, but impressed me as the best example of how to be a good photojournalist.
Before I even had the opportunity to head back to our agreed upon meeting spot, Ben found me. He was heading out with an ambulance crew to pick up people in need of medical care to take them to Sunapi. Ben asked me anxiously (the team was waiting for him) if I wanted to go. I told him no. I decided I wanted to stay and see how I could be of help at the hospital. We had no way of keeping in touch as Ben’s cell phone wasn’t working, so we agreed we would just meet up at Villa Creole later that night. And just like that, we parted ways.
I wasn’t really sure where to be– or who to talk to. There were people at the hospital from organizations from all over the world, including multiple red crosses, and dozens of NGOs. So after making a brief circle of the the ground, getting a feel for the layout of things, I approached a random doctor who simply appeared to be more in charge then other doctors around. Illusion or not, he was the man to talk to. I told him I was a photographer, had no medical background, but was at least a healthy body and would do anything he wanted me to do. I told him I was putting my camera down for the day.

Without a moment of hesitation he slapped a badge on me– he was with the International Medical Corps– and gave me a job: assisting a young doctor named Patrick to put together a new pediatrics ward in a portion of the hospital that hadn’t collapsed. Along with Patrick we assembled a group of young Haitian volunteers and began begging the stout, sharp-tongued Haitian woman who operated as the pharmacist to give us a supplies to stock the ward. Since supplies were terribly scarce, she took her job very seriously as the gatekeeper between doctors in various roles that tried to beg and coerce her into giving them more of this or that. By the end of the day, I’d sweet talked her into giving us pretty much everything on our list, and I think she still liked me when it was all said and done.

Patrick could not have been much older then me. He looked to be 29 years old. But back in California he was an emergency room MD who split his time between the states, and doing work with IMC in Iraq. He was friendly and hard-working and impressed me immediately.
The team of young Haitians that were with me spoke no English, and I no Creole, but we sweated together all day, gathering usable hospitable beds and mattresses from empty, dingy corners of the hospital and corralling them in two large rooms at the top of a stairway in the back portion of the hospital. As soon as a few beds were set up, doctors and nurses were bombarding us with requests to bring children in. There was simply no room anywhere else. Frantically, I continued to haul filthy mattresses in, dust them off, and cover them with hospital gowns so they could start laying children on them.

For the first hour or so of working, there was no doctor in the new pediatrics ward we were assembling. But finally one arrived. She was frantic, clearly stressed. I did everything I could to help her set the unit up comfortably so she could make rounds and give proper care. Her name was Dr. Conde, and she was a Haitian-American from Brooklyn. Other nurses that accompanied her were Haitian-born as well. One of them lived blocks away from me in Harlem.

At first I don’t think Dr. Conde knew what to make of me. I didn’t tell her I was a photographer, just a volunteer with the International Medical Corps– which was true. But the longer I was with her, rushing in and out of the pharmacy, grabbing meager supplies when I could, and helping transport children from stretchers onto beds, the more she warmed to me. And she was a good doctor.

Finally the two rooms that made up the new ward were filled with young children– many of them no older then three– some of them literally minutes old. I was hot and incredibly thirsty when I glanced out the window and saw that the sun was sinking below the horizon. I was losing light, and there was no electricity in the building. I asked Dr. Conde if it would be okay if I took a few pictures. “Of course!” There was no more work for me to do, so I grabbed my camera and made a single round through the ward.

Most of the children I was photographing had seen me around all day. As far as they were concerned, I was a doctor. So when I approached their beds with a smile, there was a warmness already between us. I followed suit with the journalist I had seen earlier. Whenever I took a photo, I made the “May I?” gesture. And sometimes I would even get a smile. There were children with recently amputated limbs, severe burns and lacerations, struggling newborns, head injuries, and on and on.

After I finished taking pictures, I asked the nurses if there was anything else I could do. They had one more request: there were some limited pain medications being given, but the nurses were starting worry. As dusk passed, and darkness set in, they were deeply concerned that in the night, with no pain meds, no one would sleep. That the children would cry in agony all night, exhaust themselves, and exhaust the staff. So I set off on my last mission for the day.

I ran down to the pharmacy to make one last minute inquiry, but found the doors locked and bolted shut. I made a few circles of the compound. Most volunteers had left. The medical help at boiled down to the skeleton crew. But I caught a glimpse of Patrick hauling a man in on a stretcher.

“Patrick!” He looked over at me, clearly exhausted. “We need acedomedophine for the kids.”

He pointed me in the direction of a storage closet that might still be open. “We have some donated supplies we’ve been hiding in there. See if you can get to them.”

As I was walking away something dawned on me and my heart sank. “Patrick!” I called after him again. He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Where are you staying?”

“Villa Creole, in Petionville.” My spirits rose again. “Perfect! Me too. Can I get a ride back there?”

“Of course.”

With that I hurried off to the IMC horde, which turned out to be a few meager boxes of random, mostly useless, medical supplies. But there was adult-strength acedomedophine which could be administered in small doses to the kids. I grabbed a box of it and ran back up to the nurses who almost kissed me.

When I left the ward, it was completely dark. The nurses were making rounds with flashlights and getting ready for another long night shift.
I hurried back to the IMC makeshift headquarters on site and barely made the vanload that was heading back up the hill to Villa Creole. At this point I was well past my deadline for meeting Ben, so I hoped he hadn’t somehow left without me. I piled in with the International Medical Corps crew, who I decided were a pretty likable bunch, and we slowly bounced and bumped our way up hill back to Petionville.
When I arrived at Petionville I managed to scrounge a bottle of water. I pulled two Clif bars out of my bag and sat down at a table by the pool. Virtually everyone, doctors and press alike, had arrived back at the hotel base and were buzzing around me. Ben, however, was nowhere to be seen.

After sitting alone for a few minutes munching on a carrot-cake flavored Clif bar, the IMC crew found me and pulled chairs up around my table. Patrick plopped an ice-cold Red Stripe down in front of me. Most of the day I had been keenly aware of my inability to really help any of the patients at General Hospital. But it was nice to feel appreciated and, more importantly, to feel a sense of community. I sat for a while and chatted with them as they recounted stories from the previous days, as well as from their time in Iraq and around the world.
Around 10 PM, I received a text from my friend Jonathan. Jonathan was a friend of mine whom I’d known for years. We originally met because of a trip I took in 2006 to Uganda. I had stayed with him in Lira, Uganda where he was working to start an orphanage, so we were used to seeing each other in the context of the third world. He traveled far more then I did to impoverished places all over the globe, producing video pieces for various organizations. The night I was contemplating going to Haiti, I had called Jonathan.
“Hey man” I had said, “What are you up to?”

“Oh, just got back to Orange County. Hopefully I’ll be back here for a while.” He hesitated. “Well, actually that’s not true. I’m possibly going to Haiti tomorrow.”

“No way! Me too. That’s actually why I’m calling!”

Jonathan informed me he was waiting for funding for a possible trip to Port au Prince. We exchanged information and he gave me some leads on contacts in Haiti. One of them was an orphanage called Child Hope International.

Jonathan is a rare gem. Once in Uganda we had been driving to meet someone at a local restaurant. It was 10 o’clock at night and we were already hours late. But yet at the site of some street children he recognized, he pulled the van over and spent a half an hour catching up with the boys, making sure they had a place to stay, making sure they had food. He had a preferential view to the poorest– often quoting Psalm 68:5 which calls God the “father of the fatherless.” Fatherless himself, Jonathan has a massive heart for the orphans of the world, and he’s devoted his young life so far to that end.

Jonathan had been to Haiti before and had a lot of quality footage of conditions before the quake– specifically of the orphan situation– which was something few news organizations had. So now Jonathan was working closely with CNN on a documentary on which he later became co-producer, along with CNN’s Soledad O’brien.

Throughout my trip so far, I had been texting back and forth with Jonathan– mostly for general news and to share tips. But now he was texting me, anxious to meet up. I told him I was at Villa Creole. He said he’d been there before and was not far down the road. In a matter of a half an hour he, along with his girlfriend Lindsay, who was there for Food for the Hungry, arrived at Villa Creole.

I was elated to see them. I gave Jonathan a bear hug. He and Lindsay looked at the buzzing makeshift newsroom/compound around them and then assessed me. I was more of a wreck then when I had woken up. Now covered in more dirt, the physical labor of the day had caused me to sweat, the dirt and filth on me to cake and smear, and I’m sure I smelled atrocious.

As they started asking me questions about my situation, I started to become aware of its’ bizarreness. We walked outside of the hotel to the dark driveway where their car was parked.

“Where have you been sleeping, brother?” Jonathan asked me.

“Well, wherever. Last night I slept in the back of a truck.”

“How much money do you have?”

That I didn’t know. I pulled out my wallet and slid the remaining cash out of it. It was then that I realized I had only eight dollars. I didn’t say the amount out loud, they saw it.

“You only have eight bucks?” Lindsay sounded startled.

Well, I had more then that in my bank account obviously, I retorted, but there weren’t exactly a plethora of financial institutions from which to withdraw money.

“Maybe we shouldn’t hang out in the dark out here too long,” I said, “last night there were gunshots over by our truck.”

“Adam,” Jonathan was concerned, “you slept outside while there were gunshots?” The situation was actually starting to strike us as a little humorous. It was apparent to them that I hadn’t really thought about the situation, and we all three laughed a little about it. I probably did look pretty silly– gaunt, filthy, with only eight dollars in my wallet, in a ravaged country far from home, and beaming wildly to them as I retold my adventures over the last few days as if it was all part of a hilarious lucid dream.

“Well, you know something, so far God has pretty well taken care of me,” I said. “I haven’t needed anything.”

“Well maybe us arriving is God taking care of you” Lindsay mused. Almost immediately after she said those words, we heard the “pop-pop” of further gunshots not far from us. We hit the ground. While flat against the ground ducking for cover, with Jonathan’s car next to us, Jonathan smiled over at me, “You’re coming with us.” I agreed.

First, I needed to leave word of where I’d gone in case Ben arrived. At this point it was late, almost eleven. I talked to several of the journalists that had seen me with Ben, as well as the front desk. I told them to tell Ben that I was going to the Plaza Hotel and would be back in the morning. They all agreed, and I climbed in to Lindsay and Jonathan’s car and headed down the road to the Plaza.

The Plaza was a whole other world. It was a fully functioning, fully intact, first-world style hotel. The first thing we did was drop our bags off in their air-conditioned room. I marveled at the amenities. Then we headed over to the hotel restaurant. I filled my plate with food from the buffet and found a seat. Jonathan and Lindsay joined me as well as a young California guy from a small local non-profit. Shortly after I began eating, Soledad O’brien and her producer sat down with us. Everyone began recounting the devastation they’d seen. But mostly, conversation transferred to politics, bureaucracy, and philosophies about the plight of Haiti. As we chatted, I became suddenly insecure of my appearance. My jeans were covered in dust and my fingernails were black. Everyone else here was showered, and under the circumstances, pretty well groomed.

After dinner, I went back to Jonathan and Lindsay’s hotel room and took my first real shower in Haiti. It was, needless to say, so refreshing. I looked down at my feet and watched the gray water drain away.

Before heading off to bed, Jonathan and I went up to the deck overlooking the massive tent city outside in the main square. Anderson Cooper was concluding his evening broadcast. We watched in awe as Cooper did what he does best. It was such a strange site to stand twenty feet from a CNN broadcast, giant floodlights illuminating the tent-city backdrop that represented such tragedy in a country so neglected and spat upon by the rest of the world.

I went to bed early. Jonathan had to meet with CNN producers about his piece, to review footage and talk logistics. I curled up inside my sleeping bag and slept soundly until about 6 AM when the second earthquake shook the grounds of the hotel.

The creative habit is my therapy.

For those of you that have a self-hosted WordPress site like I do, you might be experiencing the same unbelievably aggravating image-upload issues that I am… It’s frustrating when you go through the trouble to upgrade software, and it’s a downgrade. Fix this, WordPress. You’re making my blogging life not-so-fun.

Now that I have that off my chest… Here are some photos from a week I spent in August in the Santa Cruz mountains with some of the people I love the most in the world in the place that I love almost more then anywhere else in the world. Having not looked at these images in 9 months, they have new meaning to me and I was surprised how much I love them– I almost don’t remember taking them.

This is also a prime example of how constantly behind I am on post-production… I just finished editing these photos.

I spent the weekend in Santa Maria, CA with 25 friends– old and new– for the 3rd annual Fauxchella. It’s our own gorilla music festival where we hang out, eat, and collaborate making music for 48 hours– culminating in a Saturday night concert and dance party.

You can see last years post from Fauxchella here, and I’m sure Laurel will have a big blog post of her photos soon.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures throughout the weekend (although the ones I did were apparently mostly of Ashley), because I spent the weekend filming everything along with my good friend Todd. So I’ve posted a little video from Saturday night of Josh performing. More to come.

Day 4

There are some things on my travels in the past that I’ve chosen to share, through stories and photographs, with friends, family, and Loose Luggage readers.  Most things, actually.  But on several of the trips I’ve been on there have been certain sacred moments that were so personal, so meaningful, so soaked with emotion and loaded with personal implications for the trajectory of my life, that I’ve kept them to myself—either in part or in whole.

These moments range from a hilltop in Northern Thailand, to an empty beach in Southern France, to a tiny mud hut, in dim late-night lamplight, in Southern Uganda.  The tying factor in all of these stories is usually (though not always) a bold, starry sky, under which I’m safely and contentedly (though unexpectedly) sprawled out for sleep.

Day four of my life-changing trip to Port au Prince just after the recent earthquake was, in itself, my most uneventful day.  But it ended just such—under the stars in an unexpected place—that it will remain the most potent memory of the trip.  It was a hot, frustrating, disillusioning day, a wild-goose-chase of sorts, and I spent most of the day irritated at feeling ineffective.  It was the mid-point of my entire trip, and the last day our rag-tag rescue team spent together before going our separate ways and setting out on our own adventures.

My fourth day— third full day in Port au Prince—was, more than anything else, a logistical nightmare, a telling testament to the chaotic remains of a city whose infrastructure before the earthquake was already as fragile as glass.  At an early hour, Ben, Doug, and I pulled ourselves out of bed, alerted our driver, loaded up our truck, gathered our team of Haitian friends who were volunteering their time with us, and bumped and bobbed our way down the rocky dirt road through town.

There were two major obstacles that made our day tiresome and made us feel incredibly ineffective.  One, was that we were almost completely out of cash.  The currency in Port au Prince had become, almost exclusively, the American dollar.  Any Haitian money that was in circulation was minimal and limited to what people had in their pockets before the quake.  All the banks were defunct and, though rumors kept circulating that they would re-open the next morning—it would never happen while I was there.

The second problem was directly linked to the first—we were nearly out of gas, and gas was becoming increasingly hard to come by.  A fascinating result of the presence of media and aid/rescue workers in the city were two booming industries: private drivers and translators.  Every day the average cost of a ride—both short and long—rose steeply.  They all seemed to be communicating well with each other across the city, because every morning there seemed to be a new consensus on what the going day-rate was for a driver or translator.

It isn’t that we weren’t happy to use their services and pay them well, but cash was becoming a precious commodity since there was no way of getting one’s supply replenished without leaving the country or having a colleague bring in a fresh supply.  And the gas stations were running out of gas.

Doug, a member of the Peruvian Fire Department, who had been allegedly contracted (unofficially) by the Turks, Chinese, and Peruvians to head up a rescue effort, was insistent on meeting up with their respective leaders.  So amidst efforts to get even a gallon of gas from somewhere, we were also bouncing around from compound to compound, in and out of UN headquarters and Sunapi, attempting to locate the Turks, Chinese, and Peruvians.

One by one, we managed to get in contact with all of Doug’s people.  It turns out that the Chinese had landed in Port au Prince, and within eight hours of arriving, had climbed back on a plane to head home.  The Turks—though we discovered a lively team of Turkish Red Cross workers, didn’t seem to have any organized rescue effort, at least that we could locate.  Upon meeting the Turkish authorities at the UN, Doug was greeted warmly but told there was no rescue team being assembled.

Doug, who was growing increasingly irritated at the overall situation, was at the very least satisfied that there was nothing more to be done at the UN, and we spent the better part of the afternoon driving around the city, attempting to find a gas station that still had gas.  Throughout the course of the day I remained in the bed of the truck with my three Haitian brothers.  The vehicle leapt and bounced violently over pot-holes and ill-paved roads.  We covered our faces with make-shift masks to vent the dust and smell of rotting bodies, and surveyed the damaged city—whose destruction was new at every turn, becoming more apparent and more visceral around every corner.

Throughout the past couple of days I had been in contact via text-messaging with several people.  A couple of them were photographers that I had never met but had been connected to just prior to my trip.  We had been keeping each other in the loop with any and all information we had gathered individually—what hospitals had vacancies, which hotels or consulates to sleep and eat at, etc.  One of those photographers, the only one that I met up with while in Haiti, was Simon, a commercial photographer from New York.   He had been texting me his whereabouts throughout the day, and informed us that he was currently working at Villa Creole, an upscale hotel in Petion Ville that had become a central hub for rescue workers and international press.

Desperate to find a way to get gas and cash—without these we were no help to anyone—we decided that we would use what remained in our gas tank to drive to Villa Creole and utilized the resources there so we could continue to be of use in the city.

The drive up the hill to Petion Ville turned out to be a long and winding two-lane road that was completely grid-locked with vehicles—both from locals and from the international community that was filling the city.  UN vehicles, ambulances, press vans, and local buses had turned the roads into clogged arteries that made traveling anywhere—even a few miles—a half-day trip.  My eyes were stinging as I sat in the back of the truck, dust and filth filling the air around me.  The day was beginning to feel like a complete daze, and I was growing more and more anxious to actually do something.

The major problem in those first days after the quake, both on a micro and macro scale, was that it took ten times longer to get anything done.  There were so many resources coming to Haiti—hundreds of millions of dollars, supplies, aid workers and doctors—but because of the limited infrastructure and level of devastation from the quake, they were all bottle-necked coming in.

Every day we were hearing the sad stories—and I assure you they were not rumors—of piles and piles of food, water, and medical supplies that were simply sitting on the tarmac at the airport.  We were hearing story after story of doctors and rescue workers whose planes circled the Port au Prince airport before returning to Miami or Santo Domingo, unable to land.

In general it was difficult to imagine what could possibly be stopping these resources from making it into the hands of Haiti’s desperate people.  But that day, Day Four, though I can’t very easily articulate it, I understood.  There were so many countries, so many organizations, so many individuals with their own agenda, their own interests, their own way of doing things.  And people were in a panicked state.  The Haitians were getting desperate and fearful, and the rescue and relief efforts were understandably rushed and hasty.   In those first few days after the quake, there was such madness on all fronts, and it was a self-perpetuating, constant handicap to accomplishing even the smallest task.

About halfway up the hill to Villa Creole, we finally found a gas station that appeared to have gas.  It was completely crowded, with people and vehicles stuffed into every crevice of bare space, with no order whatsoever, as if simply getting near the pump would cause fuel to be magically transferred into one’s tank.  We inserted ourselves into some semblance of a queue, and waited our turn.

While waiting for gas, a man approached our truck.  He was probably in his sixties, with matted gray hair and a gnarled gray beard.  He was carrying a sack with his things in it and appeared to be of European-Haitian mixed heritage.  His clothes were tattered and layered and his skin weathered and filthy.  Yet he had a dignity to the way he dressed and carried himself.  In general, he reminded me of many of the homeless men I’ve met in Los Angeles or New York City.

The man looked at us, noticing, I imagine, the white guy in the back of a truck filled with Hatians, and spoke almost prophetically.  “This is hell if you’ve never seen it!”  The sentence struck me as strange—both it’s message and it’s structure.  But there was also something sinister about it’s delivery—as if he was an authority on the matter of hell on earth.  I wondered where this man had come from, and what else on the earth had he seen in his lifetime?

We reached the pump and began fueling the vehicle, paying with the remaining crumpled Haitian bills I had in my pocket.  After a few gallons of gas had dripped into our tank, the pump had run dry.  Haitian men were crowding around our vehicle and both Ben and our driver were working to get them to back away.

After narrowly eluding a debacle at the gas station, we continued our slow, crawling journey up hill.  Late in the afternoon, after stopping for directions four or five times, we finally pulled up to Villa Creole.  At a first glance, it was an exceedingly nice hotel, with traditional architecture akin to the finest buildings in Haiti—a mixture of colonial and Caribbean style.  It was nestled up on the hill, steeply overlooking the city below.

We parked the truck and walked down the narrow cobblestone path that led to the hotel’s entrance.  Outside of the hotel a small tent-city had developed.  Lawn chairs and make-shift tents were spread out in all directions along the edge of the hotel properly—which had a mini-fortress of gates, high walls, and shrubs around it.  Many of the people that were the closest to the hotel walls were severely injured.  I imagine, since Villa Creole was a haven for not only the press, but also doctors and rescue workers, that they had laid their tents out in front of the compound in hopes of receiving medical attention from the people going in and out of the compound.

To get past the gate into the Hotel, I simply had to be white.  The guard at the gate opened it immediately and let me and my Haitian brothers through, quickly squeezing it shut to prevent the Haitians begging at the gate from getting in.

We had entered another world.  For several days, save for Doug, I had been with only Haitians—but this was a place swarming with out-of-towners.  There was a massive pool out back (which was emptied) that was surrounded with the busyness of a newsroom.  Closest to the partially-collapsed hotel was a frenzy of various photographers and staff-writers working away on stories, trying to meet deadlines and fighting with the constantly over-strained and limited wireless connection.

Apart from the journalists’ work stations were tables filled with rescue workers who were taking a break from their work, doctors, and other various aid workers.  Food stands had been set up by the hotel staff to feed everyone, and, though many were staying in rooms in the wing of the hotel that had not collapsed, many tents and sleeping bags were spread out on plots of grass throughout the hotel property.

As soon as we entered the hotel premises, a short, young photographer with black-rimmed glasses and a black long-sleeve shirt approached me and energetically introduced himself as Simon, the photographer friend I’d been in communication with all week.  He gave us the tour of the facility and run-down of protocol—how to get food, where to stay.  He introduced us to all of the other journalists he’d met, and told us all of the connections and tips he could give us.  And then, after the whirlwind tour, he buzzed off with a couple of French journalists to photograph at General Hospital.

Villa Creole became a sort of base, a safety zone, a reprieve from the constant shock of what was happening outside its doors.  Villa Creole had food and drinks.  It had information, internet, empathizing expats.  It provided comfort, a feeling of peace and quiet and retreat.  And I was thankful for that.  But with that comfort came a change in situation—and a complete re-orienting of my Port au Prince experience thus far.   The moment I set foot in Villa Creole, my connection with the Haitian people weakened.  My ties to their suffering loosened.  From that point on, as long as I was at Villa Creole, I felt removed.

Granted, inside Villa Creole’s walls came resources that allowed me to do more—to do some tangible good for the people in there.  But my new partners to accomplish these things were doctors from the states, journalists from abroad.  They were no longer “my Haitian brothers.”  If my story in Haiti had two chapters, the first one would come to a close that night.  The second chapter, though it’s characters worked for CNN and Medicins sans Frontiers, was a little more detached from the reality of Haiti’s broken state.

I learned a great deal about journalism that week.  And I met a lot of fabulous journalists.  But I was incredibly thankful that I was not in Haiti as a journalist.  A documentarian, yes.   The difference was that I had no assignment, no budget, no time constraints, no insurance concerns.  No agenda.  Up until that point my “story” had been drawn out in front of me only a few moments at a time.  I followed where that story led me without, most of the time, knowing how it would turn out.  But I kept following that line in the sand, several steps at a time, and that mentality led me straight to the heart of the people.

I do not want to demonize the work that foreign correspondents do.  Quite the contrary.  I have a great deal of respect for the work that they do—for facing human suffering on nearly a daily basis throughout their year.  But most of them tended to operate within their own circles, within their own carefully-drawn boundaries and standards of practice.  As an outsider, it was fascinating to watch.  And though most of writers and photographers I met were genuinely good people, with deep concern for the people of Haiti, I did see a few unsavory things through the course of the next few days.

As the sun was getting lower in the sky, Ben and Doug set out with Ben’s laptop to try and get a wireless signal.  I sat with my fellow Haitian team and waited.  After a short while, Ben used the remaining cash he had to buy us all plates of hot food that the hotel was providing.  We scarfed them down as though we hadn’t eaten in days.  And waited.

If there’s one thing I’m bad at, it’s waiting.  So I grabbed my camera and took a walk in the tent “town” that had developed outside the walls of the hotel.  I barely took any pictures.  I mostly just walked around and smiled, probably awkwardly, at all of the people.  Waving at this mother bathing her child, or that mother hanging up laundry on a tree branch.  Smiling at this child playing football, or that father relaxing in the shade.

Nearby, a building had crumbled to pieces.  I climbed up on the heap of cinder blocks and could smell the bodies that were rotting underneath.  Covering my face with my t-shirt-mask, I stared out into the valley below.  With the sun setting low in the sky, there was an impeccable, orange-yellow light filling the city, illuminating the hazy dust-filled air.  Below me was a tragic sight of cinderblock dripping down the hillsides as though the ground underneath were melting ice-cream.

After staring out into the valley for what seemed like eternity, I climbed down the mound and began walking back toward the hotel.  Just outside the gate a child no more than 3 years old came bounding towards me.  He and his buddy had been playing some kind of a game of tag, and I had become home base.  He threw himself into my arms, safety zone, and laughed hysterically.  His friend admitted his defeat..  I spun the boy around and set him back down next to his companion and they ran off down the hill to keep playing their game.

Back inside the compound I donated my time to Doug, helping him transcribe some e-mails.  While finishing an e-mail to Doug’s wife, I overheard conversation from a correspondent from a notable New York City news-source that made me sick to my stomach.

As I said before, I have no desire to demonize the work that foreign correspondents do.  And I need to emphasize that most of the journalists I met were hard-working people that were just doing their job the best they could under incredibly difficult circumstances.  But there were several incidences in the media compounds throughout my week in Haiti that were very unsettling.

The man, who was irritable and spoke loudly and sharply, had already been complaining about the rate of inflation of meals at Villa Creole.  Keep in mind that the manager of the hotel, whose home had collapsed, was housing his family in a dilapidated room and was himself sleeping in his car.  As I sat typing, enduring this journalists’ frustrated rants, he started to complain about the people outside of the hotel—the roughly two-hundred homeless Haitians that had set up their homes and families outside Villa Creole’s walls.  They had no where else to go. We were the guests, this was their neighborhood.  We had homes to go back to.  They had nothing.

But apparently, much to this man’s chagrin, they were beginning to stink.  They were “pissing and shitting in the streets” he complained, not to mention that the building across the way was starting to make the air smell like dead bodies.  And he was livid.  How was he supposed to focus on his work with all that nuisance of dead-body-fecal-smell in the air?  And what was the hotel staff going to do about it?

I’ve never fought a man in my life, but I want to rear back and lay him out with one fell swoop.  Here he was in the comfort of the hotel compound, with wireless internet, a place to lay his head, delicious, enormous meals, and even a full open bar, and he was complaining that these destitute people outside dared to stink up his air.  I felt a knot in my throat, but swallowed my words.

As the night crawled on, several empty gunshots were fired outside the compound—mostly likely some kids messing around and less likely any real skirmish—but nonetheless it put everyone in the press compound on edge.  Our driver and Haitian brothers that had been traveling with us, and waiting patiently at the compound, were incredibly hesitant to head back to Ben’s mother’s for the night.  But after Ben, Doug and I discussed the issue, we decided it would still be the safest and best option to pile back into the truck and head back home.

Our primary concern was that, though Doug, Ben and I could likely sleep in the compound with all of the other doctors and aid workers that were spread out on the grass, the rest of our crew would probably be asked to leave the compound before bed.  And since they had already been locked out once by the hotel staff (Ben had fought with all of his entertainment-industry-post-U.S. Marine-skills to get them back in), it was decided that we should head back down the hill for the night where we could all have our own beds in the safety of a quieter part of town.

So we climbed back into the truck—Doug, Ben, myself, and our four companions.  As we started bouncing our way over the dirt road away from Villa Creole and out to the main road, several more gunshots were heard being fired about 25 feet away on the other side of a ten-foot cinder-block wall.  Terrified, our driver made the call, he would not attempt to drive down the hill through Petion Ville in the dead of night.

So we backed back into our parking spot about 30 feet from the gated entrance to Villa Creole.  It was about 11 PM.  Once we had parked I hopped out of the back of the truck and around to the door of the cab.  I looked at Ben.

“What are we going to do?”  I asked him, knowing.

“I guess we’ll just try and get some sleep here.  You and Doug and I can probably go back inside and sleep where it’s safer, but these guys are going to need to stay out here.”  He finished his sentence with an open-ended inflection in it as if he was waiting for me to say something before he continued. I looked at him, knowing that wasn’t going to happen.  We were one in mind.  If anyone slept outside, we all slept outside.

In the back of the truck my three Haitian brothers were situating themselves up against the cab, trying simultaneously to spread themselves out as much as possible, whilst trying to huddle together to keep warm.  For my part, I leaned my backpack against the rear wheel-well and unloaded a couple of things from my bag:  a tiny stuff-sack that I’d brought, my rain-shell, and a fleece.  I unpacked the sleeping bag out of the stuff-sack and unzipped it into a small blanket.  I tossed that towards the back for my three brothers to use as a cover.  I don’t speak Creole and they didn’t speak English, but we nodded at each other and smiled.  “We’re all in the same boat here.”  I pulled on my fleece and leaned back against my backpack.  I pulled my orange rain-shell up over me like a blanket and kicked my feet up on the raised tailgate.  There was no rear window on the truck’s shell, so though we had covering from potential rain, I had an open-air view of the stars glistening overhead.

That moment—sprawled out with my brothers in the back of a truck-cab in ravaged-Haiti, staring up at the stars, is strung together with only a few other major moments in my life.  Strung together with that hilltop in Northern, that beach in Southern France.  It was a rare moment in which I felt fully and utterly in the moment—for once completely un-self-aware or self-conscious.  Pure, bathed in moonlight.  One of the most treasured nights of my life, in a sense.

I’ve slept in the streets of Santa Cruz, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and Harrisburg, PA, respectively.  I’ve also camped plenty, and slept in bizarre situations around the globe.  I’m accustomed to sleeping in uncomfortable places.  And though I didn’t sleep for long—at around 3:30 AM Ben woke me—I slept, once again, soundly, deeply, lost in an abyss of peace.

to be continued (soon I promised)…

Continued from Day 1 & Day 2.

Day 3.

At approximately 5 o’clock in the morning I heard the panicked and urgent voice of Doug.  He had ripped open the zipper of the tent that Ben and I were sleeping in and was staring down at us through the darkness.

“We have to get those girls to the hospital or they’re going to die.” He urged.  “They’re sitting there under that sheet with basic injuries that are easily treatable and yet they’re going to die.  We gotta do something!”

“Okay,” Ben said, quietly, attempting to shake away his sleepiness.  “I’m up.”

I grappled for my t-shirt and iPhone and stumbled out of the tent.  Still head-heavy with sleep, I brushed my teethe, splashed water on my face, and began packing my day pack with the essentials: a water bottle, meager medical supplies, my camera, and some Clif bars.  I then walked out into the courtyard of Ben’s mother’s house.  The entire property had become (and still is) a safe-haven for families in the community that had lost their homes.  Strewn across the yard where I had slept were blankets, cots, and mats.  But by 5:30 everyone had awoken and was gathered in the far corner of the courtyard.  They were singing Haitian praise songs.

I walked over and sat down on the ground in the midst of the small service.  They were in a rough circle, some standing, some sitting.  Their voices were raised, but still felt hushed in the still of the morning.  The sun had not yet emerged and faint stars still peppered the sky.  I closed my eyes and let their upbeat Creole singing—the words dancing in the air—drizzle down over me.  The night before, I had been sitting with these same people when they had learned the news that more of their family members had been crushed in the quake.  I had seen them wave their arms, asking the sky for unfulfilled consolation.  And now they were raising their arms to that same sky, praising God.

When thinking back to the things I saw in Haiti, it seems trite to make suppositions or formulate axioms that can be garnered from the tragedy I witnessed.  I can’t seem to put pen to paper and write sentences that involve “hope amidst tragedy” or “resilience” without feeling like I’m making lightness out of the great suffering the people of Haiti have endured.  The cost of any lesson learned, of any scales that have fallen from the wealthier West’s eyes, is great—and impossible to justify.  But certain moments while I was in Port au Prince spoke loudly to me.  Certain instances seemed to tear through the story of Haiti’s recent earthquake, and alluded to the larger story of a land that was once referred to as “The Pearl of the West Indies.”

I don’t hope for consolation—just as the people of Haiti don’t hope for some kind of an explanation.  None would suffice.  But they hope—if they hope at all—for a greater, stronger future.  They hope—if they can bear it—for wholeness and opportunity.  Nothing, no amount of media attention, no act of compassion, no donation of time or resources, will replace what they’ve lost.  Nobody can look into the face of the man I met who lost every single member of his family, his home, and give him any thing, any words, that will begin to console his great loss.

So I don’t hope, on behalf of the people of Haiti, simply for the playing field to be leveled—for their misery to be assuaged or quality of life to rise back closer to our standards.  Instead, since I believe in my core that they are children of God, I hope that a greater story will burst through this one.  Because this Chapter seems purposeless.  This Chapter has done such violence to humanity that it’s hard to not put the book down.  But my hope, and I think the ultimate hope of these people, is not that this part of their story will someday feel “worth it,” that they will all be able to look back and say “See—we didn’t even know how great things would turn out!”—because 200,000 lives are not easily replaced, reconciled or accounted for.  No, hope will have to mean something greater that escapes words.  Something we can’t write about or articulate.  Something that can’t be argued, synopsized, or summarized.  Something no poetry or prose could convey.

That is why it was unexpected moments like that 5:30 AM worship service where I sensed hope.  It would cleanse me in a way that I couldn’t plan, extrapolate or articulate.  But it was there.  And I’m trying to carry it with me.

That day went on to be one of the longest of my life.  Ben’s mother had arranged a truck and a driver for us.  We filled two large water jugs with water and I used up my ration of water-purification tablets on one of them.  Several of the young men from the village joined us.  And after two hours of slowly readying for the day, we headed out.

A few houses away four people lay waiting for help.  An elderly woman who had been electrocuted, a middle-aged woman with several broken bones, a young pregnant girl, and a child.  With Ben, Doug, and our driver in the front of the cab, Ben’s mother, myself, and one of the young men from the village in the back of the cab, and a couple others in the back, we headed over to load them up and try and get them to a hospital.

As we made them as comfortable as possible in the back of the truck for what would turn out to be a long day of driving and waiting, I took out my camera to take a photo.  It is strange, to me, the relationship a photographer has with the people in his world.  It is strange how acceptable it becomes to take images of people in the midst of pain or anguish.  In my travels as a documentarian I’ve had to learn the delicate balance that exists in those situations, and in Haiti it seemed like the line on which we photographers walked was as narrow as a string.  In situations like the earthquake in Haiti, mere storytelling can easily become exploitation.  Even the most well-intentioned journalist or documentary photographer can cross lines.  I know I did it while I was there.  But I tried to do my best to keep in step with what I feel is the ethical way of telling a story of this nature through photographs.

For my part, that means thinking through the environment, the position of my body with theirs, the meeting of our eyes, the acceptance of the camera, and the understanding that it’s a give as much as it’s a take.  That when I lift my lens, theirs an unspoken contract there.   That their privacy and their rights are just as important as the best-paid supermodels’.  Greater photos come out of that kind of an exchange.  And the other photos—great or not—aren’t worth it if they rob the subject of humanity—especially when their humanity already seems to have been ripped from them.

So I clicked.  And hope (though I know I failed at times) that those images were gifts to me and to us from the person staring back from them, and not something I took.  And I hope that I was always willing to put my camera down if necessary.  That these two hands were used as best as they could be used—whether that meant holding a child, or holding a camera.

Our rag tag team spent the better have of the morning darting around Port au Prince, attempting to find a place where we could take the injured people we were transporting.  Doug, Ben, and I were in and out of so many places throughout the course of those eight hours it’s hard to keep all of the facts straight.  We stopped by a UN Hospital and were told there was no more room—check the Israel Hospital.  But no one knew where the Israeli Hospital was.  Somebody said their might be room at General Hospital, but somebody else told us it was horrific scene there—practically just a morgue.

We were short on gas—the whole town was—but we kept following as many leads as we could.  We stopped at a compound near the airport called Sunapi.  I’m not sure what exactly Sunapi was.  But inside it’s gates were multiple clinic operations, food, and water.  It also appeared to be the base for several of the rescue and aid teams.  A mob had formed outside of its gates and as we tried to drive our makeshift ambulance through the entrance, young men began piling on top of our truck.  We made it through with the aid of several UN soldiers, and once past the gates attempted to find a place where our patients could get care.

Waiting.  So much waiting.  Hurry up and wait.  We parked our truck near a group of exhausted Dominican rescue workers while Doug ran off to get us in and out of trouble three times with officers from four different countries. And we waited.

While we were waiting a white Jeep pulled up beside us with a small family—a father, mother, grandmother, and child.  The child’s foot was wildly bandaged—bulbous and white with tape and cloth.  He was reclining in the back seat.  Ben spoke with the mother as she explained that something had fallen on his foot during the quake and it appeared to be infected.  Ben told her we would do our best to help her find medical care for the boy.  After that, Ben went to look for Doug.

I poured some cups of water from the jug we had purified, and slowly tipped the cup to the boy’s mouth.  Someone had given me sweet crackers, so I ripped open the packaging and handed a few to him.  He looked up at me with curious but trusting eyes.  I lifted my camera, he gave, and I received.

After some time, Doug reappeared.  “Where’s Ben?!” he bellowed.  I wasn’t sure.  “I found a place that will take them.  Follow me.”  Doug cut off through the compound and I instructed the driver to follow the big loud Canadian.  As we drove through the crowded road that led back toward the front of Sunapi, our vehicle got lost in a sea of buses, cars, ambulances, UN vehicles, and people.  I turned around and saw that the white Jeep with the boy in it was not behind us.  I got out of the car and ran back to where we had been, but the Jeep was nowhere to be found.

We reached a medical tent near the entrance and Doug was enraged.  “Where is Ben?  We have to stick together!”  I told Doug I would run and get him immediately while Doug attempted to find care for the three women and girl.  I ran back through the throngs of people to attempt to find the Jeep and the boy.  I checked every white SUV, but couldn’t find him.  Finally I saw Ben walking toward me.

“Ben!” I grabbed him, “The boy! I can’t find him!”  We were one in thought.  We ran through Sunapi frantically until we finally found the white Jeep.  The facts are fuzzy, but if I remember it correctly the following is what took place:  the boy was now lying on the ground amidst a group of badly injured people.  Authoritatively, Ben grabbed a couple of nurses and brought them to the attention of the young boy.  The boy was probably eight years old.  His parents hovered over him helplessly, seemingly paralyzed to do anything for their son.

The nurses unwrapped the gauze and tape and revealed a foot that had been deeply severed from his toe straight back towards his heal.  The gash was massive and left the smaller, severed portion separated and his bones visible.  Having been untreated for days, it was a mess of tissue and oozing with puss.  The de-bandaging had already put the boy in convulsions of agonizing pain and now the nurses needed to give him a shot—straight to the bone—I  assume to ease the pain.

With his parents hovering over us, and a desperate man nearby grabbing at us for attention, we strapped on gloves and I set down my camera—after snapping a quick shot of the whole scene.  My head was getting heavy.  I don’t handle blood well.  But I focused my attention and gritted my teethe.  The nurses were exhausted and were unable to keep the boy still so they could administer the shot.  So Ben looked at me assertively and said, “Grab his upper body with all your might.”

In Creole, Ben began coercing the boy to be still, an impossible task.  He was, fatherly, stern.  “Hold still, if you ever want to walk again!”

“I don’t want to walk again!!” The boy screamed.

“If you ever want to play football again.”

“I hate football!”

“If you ever want to run!”

“I HATE RUNNING!!”

At this point the boy was grabbing my neck, pulling at my bandana and slapping at my face.  Staring up at me with near-hatred in his eyes as if I was the source of the pain in his foot. I wrapped by arms around the boys upper half, bracing my arms parallel to his torso, lowering my chest over him to try and brace him.  Ben continued urging him to be still and holding his lower half.  Finally we had him still for a moment and nurse quickly stuck the needle deep into his severed foot.

The boy arched his back and bent his head backwards and his screams of pain turned into a silent wheeze.  Tears were pouring down his face and a pool of urine expanded outward from under him, soaking the cardboard under him, as well as my arms and sleeves.

After what seemed like an eternity, the nurse pulled the syringe out of the boys foot and he collapsed onto the cardboard and his wheezing transitioned into exhausted whimpers.  My muscles relaxed.  Ben and I stood.  I had a lump in my throat.  I pulled off my gloves and tossed them to the ground.  I walked away and rinsed my arms off in a puddle of water that had formed from a broken water line nearby.

The location in Sunapi where the boy had received the shot was essentially a holding area.  A pile of cardboard had become bedding for a group of desperate patient overflow.  So Ben lifted the boy from the spot on the ground.  We were now intrinsically tied to that boy, Ben and I.  For Ben’s part, he had a son the same age back in States.  And we both felt a deep sense of responsibility for him.  So we ploughed our way through the crowds of people, weaving our way through a mish-mash of vehicles, towards a medical tent where Doug was impatiently waiting.  All the while I ran ahead of Ben to clear a path for the boy and for his foot that was sticking straight into the air, dripping with fluids.

The boy was given priority and disappeared into the bowels of a dark and smelling tent of injured people.  Meanwhile, Doug informed us that our patients, who were still waiting, exhausted and in pain, in the back of our truck, were not going to be admitted at Sunapi.  Mission failed.  Piling back into the car and exiting the compound I felt numb.  And the rest of the day played out like a blur.  Everyone had different information.  I was in communication with other photographers, aid workers and documentarians from the States.  Texting madly, we tried to find the best place to go for medical care with the limited amount of gas remaining in our tank.

As quickly as Doug was able to get himself into trouble, I must admit he had an uncanny way of emerging heroic in certain situations.  A mile or so down the road from Sunapi we stopped at the UN headquarters.  Doug climbed out of the truck and we all waited, afraid of what kind of problems he might be getting us into.  Minutes later he emerged and waved towards a UN vehicle, instructing us to follow him.  And for the next ten minutes we had a UN escort vehicle that lead us through busy, crowded, panic-ridden Port au Prince to the Brazillian UN a few miles away, right through the gates.

However, they, too, informed us that they had no more capacity for patients.  The excruciating heat of the sun was beginning to bake us.  We resolved to try General Hospital, at last, when the engine wouldn’t turn over.  We were completely out of gas.

Everyone climbed out—all but Ben’s mother who had been waiting patiently inside the truck this entire time—and we pushed the truck outside of the inner gate of the UN, off to the side of the road, and our driver walked off with a gas can.

More waiting.

Outside of the gate of the UN there was a small crowd of starving people spread out in the shade near the wall.  They had been told that at 2 PM they would be allowed in and given food.  While we waited for our driver to return, we chatted with a group of street kids—orphans—gave them some water, and tried to explain (feeling like quite the silly Americans) that we didn’t have any money we could give them.

I took some photos of the boys I met there.  One of which—though it isn’t a very clear photo—struck me as particularly poignant.  A young boy in a baggy t-shirt, a boy with an energetic and humorous extroversion typical of kids that are used to hustling in the streets, had wandered off toward a UN tank about a hundred yards away.  The tank was piled with UN soldiers who were staring down at him.  The part of Port au Prince that we were in was desert-like, dry, flat, and at that moment, very windy.  The boy stood in the center of the road looking up at the soldiers with his arms outstretched, the hot breeze flapping at his baggy shirt.  Though the picture I took is from pretty far away, the image it burned in my memory is vivid.  Pleading and vulnerable, small and desperate, arms wide open in surrender against the might of the world, and yet he will sleep in the street tonight and possibly, eventually, starve.

After about a half an hour of waiting in the sun, Doug, whose health was troubling him, disappeared into the UN compound.  After another half an hour, he re-emerged with an ambulance.  Additionally, Doug himself had been given some medical attention, including a vaccination, and he now had a bag of water bottles, masks, and pills.

After a long day of trying to find care for four desperate Haitians, we finally watched as they were loaded into an ambulance and carried away into the UN compound to receive much-needed medical attention.  Shortly thereafter our driver returned with a canister of gas and we headed out for a grim tour of the city to see if there was anything else we could do before sundown.

For roughly two hours before dusk, we drove through the piled ruins of Haiti’s capital.  We stopped here and there to ask if people needed help.  I took pictures whenever I could.  Ziz-zagging through the dusy streets of the city, my t-shirt-bandana pulled up tight over my mouth and nose, we bore witness to the a crumbled piece of civilization—a city laid to waste.

Bodies had been pulled from rubble and covered with blankets, and many  were still buried under cinder blocks.  The smell of death that resulted filled the air, which was already thick with dust that just never seemed to settle.  With Doug and Ben in the cab with Ben’s mother’s, I sat facing forward on the back tailgate with my two Haitian friends.  I photographed the destruction from my seat in the truck, and sometimes just closed my eyes and let the dust, smells, heat, and wind hit my face.  I wanted to touch and smell the destruction around me—to allow myself to be covered in the dust of these people’s homes.  It felt almost baptizing, the filthier I became.

At one point we passed a yellow tour bus that was arriving in the city from Santo Domingo.  It was filled with doctors, aid workers, and journalists who were just arriving on the site of the destroyed city.  I watched as some of them took pictures and others just stared.  “Just wait,” I wanted to tell them.  “Just wait.  You’ll see.”  A man ran up to the bus, beating his chest.  Ben translated what he was saying.  He’d lost his family—everything—and was pleading in desperation for help.  It was an awful thing to witness.  The man ran alongside the bus, waving his arms frantically, crying out.

In the course of our drive through the city back to Ben’s mother’s house, we saw a food storehouse that had been destroyed—and workers trying to salvage the sheet metal from it’s walls and roof.  Ben informed me the building had been a central distribution center that fed all of Haiti.

As the sun was setting, our truck and crew bounced it’s way down the rocky dirt roads that led back to home base.  Once there, Doug collapsed into a snoring slumber, while Ben and I sat back, taking a sigh of relief for rest, recalling the day’s events, and consuming a delicious Haitian meal thanks to Ben’s mother.

For the majority of my trip to Haiti I was contented to eat Clif bars.  But I was able, on a couple of occasions, to have a full meal.  And under the circumstances was always humbled and grateful.  With all of those that were starving around me, it was hard to imagine how I had stumbled into such luxury: home-cooked food made with the love of a mother, a comfortable mat and blanket to sleep on in the enclosed, walled safety of Ben’s mother’s courtyard.

The night was peaceful.  We all gathered around Ben’s computer to view the photos from the day, and after a bucket shower, I stayed up late exchanging stories and laughter with Ben, Doug, and Ben’s cousin under flashlight.  The light of Ben’s mother’s lantern bounced around the walls of the house as she bustled around us, busying herself with duties of hospitality.

That night it became clear to me how much Ben was revered in his community.  The young men we had traveled with hung on his words and watched him with respect and near awe.  The stars were explosive that night, and I snapped some photos of them before heading to my mat for another deep nights rest—my last decent night’s sleep of my trip, and last night sleeping at Ben’s house.

Over the course of the next 7 days, I’m going to be publishing here on Loose Luggage a seven-part article about my recent trip to Haiti in the wake of the 7.1 earthquake that has now claimed some 200,000 lives.  Each part of this article will correspond (roughly) with 1 day of my trip.

Day 1

On January 12, 2010 I was sitting in one of the oldest bars in the United States, Frances Tavern, where George Washington used to (allegedly) throw a cold one back.  It sits just south of the site of the World Trade Center and a few blocks away from Wall Street.  It was a wintry sunset that evening that cut through the icy cold and made the buildings look epic against the blue sky.

I was sitting at the bar with a couple of close friends when news of a 7.1 earthquake began flashing in banner form across the game that was playing on the TV behind me.  News of an earthquake in remote Haiti, which I new little about, even geographically—didn’t catch my attention.  However, over the next 24 hours, the gravity of the situation started to catch my eye, along with the rest of the world.

I can’t say that my choice to go to Haiti days after the quake was really a decision I consciously worked through.  As a friend noted to me recently, my soul went before me and I followed it.   That is to say—I wouldn’t say it was any noble reason that caused me to go.  But I saw what was happening there and something drew me in.

As soon as the decision was official, that is to say, as soon as my ticket was booked, I dove in head first.  I began a constant twitter feed that would continue throughout my trip and became a comforting reminder that I was connected to a world outside of that ravaged country.

Support came in from all over the city and country.  A photographer friend from Michigan generously paypaled me support cash.  My good friend at Vera Wang met me in Bryant Park with an envelope of cash.  Martha Stewart Living’s design team gave me a couple of first-aid boxes and a note wishing me safety.  Best Made Co. donated an axe towards the cause.   As I ran around the city all evening attempting to furnish myself with supplies and make as many connections as I could before I headed in, I was answering calls, e-mails, texts, and tweets from people wanting to help in any way they could.

The support that came in was overwhelming and appreciated, but was accompanied by a weight of the reality of what I was about to do.   As I ran from Medicins sans Frontiers’ offices in midtown, to the Red Cross in Hells Kitchen, I busied my mind with the list of last minute to-dos that inevitably accompany a trip of this nature.

About 36 hours after having booked my ticket, and three days after the initial quake, I was on the M60 bus from my apartment in Harlem to LaGuardia International.  I had a large suitcase filled to the brim with generously donated supplies, my backpack with a minimal amount of personal items—some clothes, toothbrush, hand sanitizer, a small sleeping bag—and a small shoulder bag that contained my passport, camera, and notebook.  Additionally, I’d purchased a small fanny-pack first aid kit and leather gloves.

I had a long layover in Philadelphia where I had a chance to send out some last minute e-mails, make some last-minute phone calls, connect one last time with any contacts, and start to think beyond the scurry of preparing and begin thinking about my actual game plan once I landed in Santo Domingo.

At that time most planes were not being let in to Port au Prince.  Those of us that were heading down were hearing reports of planes circling the airport for hours before being sent back to Santo Domingo or Miami where they originated.  For that reason I had booked a ticket into the Dominican Republic, and was hoping to get into Port au Prince by road.  Though in the end this turned out to be a really good tactical plan for getting into the city, I admit I had fears that I wouldn’t have a chance of making it into Haiti at all.

As I sat at in Philadelphia’s airport a sort of shadow fell over me.  I had awoken that morning with the same feeling—“What am I doing? Why am I doing this?”  I was a rogue documentarian heading into a devastated country with no real plan for how I would be able to help.  It’s not something I would recommend to everyone—or almost anyone.  But I usually travel well alone, and have always in the past have managed to find my way.  Deep down I knew all of the experiences I’ve had around the world would help me in this situation.

While in Haiti, networking wasn’t something you did if you were good at it—it was completely essential.  Doctors, aid workers, rescue workers, journalists—we all exchanged information constantly, trading bits of knowledge, rumors, new pieces of news.  I kept a massive pile of notes in my iPhone and my notebook that I referred back to constantly.  Names, hospitals, this US military officer, that UN doctor, this photographer, that Aid Worker.

The first bit of networking came an hour or so before I boarded my plane.  I met a man named Richard.  Richard was a missionary who also happened to be a former Green Beret medic.  On furlough in the States, he had told me that he felt he couldn’t just sit watching the news—he felt he had to actually do something.  So his constituents had quickly raised support for him and he booked the same flight I had into Santo Domingo.  Richard was in his 50s, had a friendly and innocent demeanor, and by the look of his packing techniques, had been around the world a time or two.

Richard, too, was working his people skills.  While at the airport he had made acquaintance with a vascular surgeon from Ohio.  I know I have her name in my notes somewhere but can’t seem to find it.  She was thin and tiny, but had an assertive way about her that showed the confidence and precision that you would expect out of an experienced surgeon (I later discovered that she was the head of her department at the hospital at which she worked).

The surgeon had been called to Haiti because her area of expertise was in amputation.  She donated her time twice a year to a clinic on the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic—which was where she was heading post-earthquake.

As chance would have it, I sat between the surgeon and the green beret on our flight.  Flanking us were Italian journalists—who immediately began schooling us in the art of networking.  They were leaning over their seats through the duration of our 4 hour flight to Santo Domingo chatting with us about our plans to get into Port au Prince, conversing with each other, devising a game plan.

They offered a spot to me in their convoy.  I told them I was thinking about it—but confided to Richard that I didn’t really trust Italian journalists.  I don’t know why I felt that way, but nonetheless Richard and I decided to “go it alone” without their aid.

Upon arrival, and after claiming all of our luggage filled with medical supplies, Richard, the surgeon, and I stepped out into the wet, warm Dominican air.

Within minutes of stepping out of the airport Richard and I had bartered for a $500 one-way ride from Santo Domingo into Port au Prince.  I was shocked at how easy it had been (though more expensive then I’d wanted it to be).   Our driver, who spoke decent English and turned out to be a very good man, told us it would not be safe to drive through the night by ourselves, and that we should link up with some other cars that were heading in to Haiti.

So he walked off and minutes later returned to the car and informed us that we would drive in with a convoy of four vehicles—one of which was chalk full of our Italian journalist friends (who turned out to be helpful and amiable).  It was just after midnight when we began cutting through the darkness under a canopy of stars towards Port au Prince.

I was in the front seat, Richard in the back, telling me more of his life story.  I haven’t been able to communicate with Richard since my trip, but at the time, and in the midst of what could have been a very fearful trip, he felt like a long-time friend.  We traveled well together, with similar mentalities of open-mindedness.  Before leaving Santo Domingo, I stopped and bought 3 large water bottles—my emergency water supply should there be limited resources in the city.

The following several hours were dream-like.  I nodded on and off, waking here and there to the inky blackness that enveloped our little convoy, save for the stretch of road immediately in front of our car that was illuminated by the headlights.  Our driver had clearly made the trek many times.  It isn’t a long straight road, but rather one that bends and curves through small villages and towns.  Without experience of having traveled it, one would inevitably be lost within the first hour.

In the middle of the night, about two hours into the trip, we stopped so our driver could relieve himself.  As he waded through the brush out of site, Richard and I stepped out of the car to stretch.  Everything was so calm.  We were in a rural part of the country, surrounded by hills, lush with trees.  The air was still, and though slightly humid, light and cool.  The sky was an explosion of stars, and it was hard to imagine that a hundred miles ahead of us lay a country in complete ruin.

Somewhere along the journey we had lost sight of our traveling companions.  We caught them about an hour outside of the border at a roadside stand where we stopped and had coffee and plantains.  Our first sign of car troubles nearly left us stranded there.  The engine wouldn’t turn over and the car had to be jumped with one of the other vehicles we were with.

Another twenty miles down the road the wheels began making such a hideous grinding noise that we couldn’t travel more then 25 mph, and again lost sight of our convoy.  We drove for another half an hour with the awful grind and a pace that was a little bit unnerving as we passed through villages that seemed, in the dark, unfriendly and foreboding.

We reached a town about ten miles from the border and could drive no more.  The Italian journalists had stopped and unloaded their camera gear to investigate a make-shift medical unit that was over-flowing with patients that had been driven in from Port au Prince.  I walked in to the building and caught my first glimpse (and smell) of the disaster that lay ahead.  White eyes stared up at me from all around me.  People in agony, limbs broken, severed, heads gashed.  The walls to the unit were blue-green and the lights ferociously white and flat.  It was a saddening scene.  I took a deep breath while I attempted to smile at the faces looking up at me.

Anxious to unload my large suitcase that was becoming a burden to carry, I decided that this was as a good a time as any to donate the supplies I’d brought in.  I felt sort of silly as I opened the suitcase for the Dominican nurses—who weren’t necessarily unimpressed, but certainly exhausted.  My supplies would help, but were, I realized, a drop in the bucket.

Someone asked me if I wanted a picture of the nurses with the supplies.  I didn’t, really, but felt somehow obligated.  They posed in front of the open suitcase looking tired, and I felt ashamed.  As if I was saying, “Yes!  I got as far as the border.  I saw some suffering.  I passed off some supplies.  I took a picture.  Now let’s get out.”

Our driver apologized, but told us that he would be able to take us no further.  The next hour was a bit of a blur.  I wasn’t really sure what was being negotiated, but somehow we piled into a new car, with some Dominicans that I admit I didn’t really trust.  Just before we took off, I wondered a few hundred feet from where we were and stumbled upon a large encampment of Dominican rescue workers, clad in what would become familiar orange shirts, waking before the dawn to pile into trucks and head back into the quake-ravaged city.

Our car began cutting into the darkness that seemed to become thicker as the towns and houses grew more meager.  Before long we were in the back of a long line of vehicles waiting to get through the border into Haiti.  Looking at the length of the line ahead of us I wondered if it might be hours before we made it to the border.  But almost sooner then I had this thought, our driver cut off of the trail onto the muddy shoulder and began racing his way to the front.  It turned out that our driver was a border patrol officer, and we were now being driven, not only directly the front of the line, but straight through the border without any questions asked.

If it seems odd, it was.  And this event, like so many other events on my trip, seemed to happen outside of my abilities and will.  Like a dream I had no control over, events, relationships, experiences, seemed to unfold in front of me like a story that had already been written and was simply taking it’s due coarse.

As we passed into Haiti, the sun was just beginning to peak out over the mountains to our left.  The landscape was completely different then those of the Dominican Republic—bare of any trees, it was almost desert-like (unfettered exportation of lumber has left Haiti deforested in many places, depleted of a resource that could otherwise be a major source of jobs and income).

Now sandwiched between some rather loud, aggressive Dominicans, with Richard in the front seat, I began to again nod in and out of sleep.  I fell in to vivid dreams, until I woke, finally, to find myself in a city bathed in morning sunlight that was almost apocalyptic, and my dream-state quickly transitioned into the nightmare that was around me.

Continued tomorrow.

Well LiNK has some great news– they’re in the running for $250,000 from Pepsi.  It’s exciting and it’s within reach, but they need as much help as they can get.  So do me (and them) a huge favor and head over to the Pepsi’s “refresh everything” page and vote for LiNK.  They’re currently in 8th place.  Let’s get them up to first!

Thanks so much for your help on this!

A North Korean woman (and me in the mirror).

That's China on the left, and North Korea on the right.

I’ve finally finished my photos and slideshow from my trip to Haiti, thanks to “Soundslides,” which is a powerful program for documentary photographers who want to share their work with the world. Click on the link below which will take you to the slideshow and then you can watch it full screen, toggle the sound, watch it with or without captions, and navigate through the individual images.

Click here for the slideshow.  And spread it around, friends– let’s let these people’s voices be heard!

Here’s what I wrote to go along with the slideshow:

I did not go to Haiti with any specific expectations. However, the six days I spent there transformed me both as a photographer and as a person.

As so often happens on trips of this nature, the Haitian people did far more for me than I could ever have done for them.

I have few words to share that would express what these images mean to me, but I hope they can be ones that represent a great sorrow that ultimately points to a far greater hope.

Haiti was once referred to as “The Pearl of the West Indies.” It’s people are strong and beautiful– and though they have seen so much suffering, I hope that it will refine them and teach them to build, and rebuild. The country of Haiti is still a great Pearl, seemingly delicate as the child I watched emerge from the womb in a tent in Port au Prince, but like that child they are filled with a vibrant future that is yet unwritten.

And I greatly anticipate a better story for them all.

-Adam

Please keep in mind that there are lots of words/images to come, but here’s a little taste of what my eyes have seen. Stay tuned for more.