March 11th, 2010 at 16:44
(Haiti)
Horisto is 4 years old. When the earthquake happened he was together with Jaz, another 4 year old. The walls of the room they were in broke down and Jaz died on the knees of Horisto. Horisto only got slightly hurt on his head. 5 days he lied underneath the ruins with the dead Jaz on top of him. His hand touched Jaz body and this is the reason it got infected and had to be amputated. He lives in the general hospital for the moment. His mother died during the earthquake, so his father is with him. They don’t know where they want to go after his release from the hospital. When I met Horisto, he ran towards me, hugged and kissed me. He smiled and danced and he is one of the most cheerful kids I have ever met.
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March 11th, 2010 at 02:03
(Haiti)
Christelle Doralus is 5 years old. The roof of her house broke down during the earthquake and she lives now with her family in a shack in Carrefour.
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March 10th, 2010 at 03:34
(Haiti)
I’m sitting in Natachas room in the morning without electricity and no Internet. Once a day we use a generator to get electricity for 1 or 2 hours. I use this time to charge my computer, my batteries and my cellphone. This weekend I have spent in Jacmel. I met two women who are working for the Kindermissionswerk and I stayed with them. I found that the situation in Jacmel is much better than in Port-au-Prince. Most of the people live in real tent-cities, where NGOs bring food every day. In Port-au-Prince is still a lot of chaos. Some people have tents, other don’t and have built shacks in the middle of a public place, food isn’t coming to all people, … I think it’s really important that people start working again, selling their own products, so that they don’t rely on others to feed themselves. In the next days I want to help a few families by buying food that they can sell on the market. They should start their own business again. I’m still a little bit ill, so I took the day off yesterday to relax and do nothing. I have much more energy again. Today I will go to Carrefour to photograph another project of the Kindermissionswerk. Tomorrow I want to start taking some pictures for my own projects. On Thursday a journalist will come to sleep in Natachas house. I’m looking forward to this; I hope we can work together. This weekend 15 American doctors will come and stay here for one week. This will be really chaotic. The house is big, but has only 2 bathrooms… 2 bathrooms for 20 people… 
Now it’s evening. I have spent the day in a school in Carrefour. On the schoolyard 600 displaced people reside in self built shacks or self built tents. On this picture you see family Francois - in the front is Nikensia, 4 years old. Their house crashed completely during the quake and they lost their father.
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March 6th, 2010 at 01:04
(Haiti)
Yesterday I arrived in Port-au-Prince around lunchtime. I flew in the country with a commercial flight, which is possible again after the earthquake since Monday. I don’t see much difference to the situation when I was here in January, except that there are more tents everywhere. Most of them look rain-resistant, so that’s good. People that didn’t get a tent, started to built shacks in the middle of the city. There are shacks in very weird places – in front of the university on the sidewalk. The rainy season started already, yesterday evening it rained for about one hour and today the sky was gray and it was quite cold for Haitian conditions. It’s amazing to see how life continues normally. When you are in a bus and don’t look outside, you would not notice any difference of the country.. People dress as before, they act as before, they smile as before. But when you do look out of the window you see that so many of the buildings are destroyed, it’s horrible.
I’m staying in the house of Natacha, my friend who is the director of the NGO “Haiti Care”. She moved into a new place last year and this house is really amazing – it has not one scratch. There still is no electricity at all, but she has a little generator that we use from time to time.
Today I took pictures for the German NGO “Kindermissionswerk”. I will work for them most of the time that I am here (I will stay for 3 weeks). Tomorrow I will visit a project of them in Jacmel.
A Haitian man sleeping in the streets.
Don Bosco center for streetchildren.
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February 11th, 2010 at 12:17
(general, Haiti)
Togehter with the ARTCO Gallerie in Herzogenrath, Germany we will organize a print sale of 49 of my Haiti pictures.
My pictures are sold in an edition of 15 pictures and the first 3 of these 15 will be sold for the good cause. 100% of the amount raised will go to projects in Haiti.
These are the prices:
20×30cm - 300 Euro (special price for this campaign - normal price 400 Euro)
40×60cm - 450 Euro (special price for this campaign - normal price 550 Euro)
60×90cm - 600 Euro (special price for this campaign - normal price 700 Euro)
The award winning picture (Unicef picture of the year 2008) - 1100 Euro - (special price for this campaign - normal price 1200 Euro)
The pictures can be bought online here: http://www.artco-ac.de/
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January 28th, 2010 at 13:13
(Haiti)
I’m sitting in the airplane of the Belgian Air Force. A few hours ago the plane took of in Santo Domingo to go back to Belgium.
I have spent one week in Port-au-Prince and I am sorry that I didn’t find time to write my blog. This time I wrote a blog in my native language German, which can be found here:
http://blog.zdf.de/3sat.Kulturtube/ -> scroll down
Haiti is widely destroyed; it’s horrible to see. An estimated 200 000 people died and the number rises each day. The hospitals are filled with patients; most of them get a Körperteil amputated and are left alone afterwards. They find themselves alone in the streets, without house, often without family and sometimes even without friends. So many people have lost everything. I talked to a 22-year-old boy, who has lost all his family and all of his friends. He happened to be in the streets during the earthquake, while his family was in their house and his friends in school – both buildings collapses and buried every person who was important to him.
I always thought everything happens for a reason. No matter what happens to me or to any other person, if good or bad - would have some kind of sense behind it. But in this situation I just cannot find the sense at all. A country that has been one of the poorest in the world since many years looses many of his kids, of his teachers, of his hospitals, of his universities, of his bancs… It basically looses his future. It’s not that they have to start at point zero - no, they first have to get all the broken buildings, all the mess out of the city before they can start all over again. And this isn’t easy with an almost complete lack of an infrastructure.
Here in the airplane are also 13 Haitian orphans flying with our group. They have been adopted and will get to their parents in Belgium as soon as we will land. They are saved. I hope they will have a good life in Belgium and I wish that when they’re grown up, Haiti will have succeeded to restart all over again and be a nice place.
I don’t think I need to write more – I think my pictures tell more than my words:
http://www.photoshelter.com/
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September 9th, 2009 at 17:06
(Haiti)
In Haiti there are over 300 000 “Restavek. The Restavecs are children of Haiti living in a family different from their family of origin and often used as domestic servants or as slaves. From poor families in rural areas, they are placed by their families in urban families. Often the economic situation of host families is not very different from those of biological families of these children. Also orphans often end up as Restavecs.
Miriam is a little 7 year old girl who lives in Port-au-Prince and is a restavek. Her father died 4 years ago. Her mother went to the countryside to organize the funeral and never returned. Today, she lives with her neighbors, who have a 6 year old son. When he is outside playing with his friends, she does the cleaning, dishes, and shopping. In return for her work Miriam has the right to sleep on the floor and eat the remains of the family meal.
More pictures - soon on my homepage
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August 9th, 2009 at 20:44
(Haiti)
I am in Haiti since 10 days. Today is my last day before I will leave tomorrow.
First I have spent 4 days on Ile de la Gonave, a beautiful little island not far from the mainisland of Haiti. I photographed the daily life there as I did on my last trip. Now I finished that project and the pictures will soon appear on my homepage.
The last days I photographed a Restavek child in Port-au-Prince. Her name is Miriam, she is 7 years old. 3-4 years ago her dad died and her mum run away, leaving her behind. Her neightboors took care after her, so that she does not end up as a streetchild. She can live with them, but sleeps on the floor while they sleep in their beds. She wakes up earlier as everyone else, so she can start doing the housework.. cleaning the dishes, cleaning the floor, go to the market, go to get water,…
She is one of the lucky ones, as in return she can go to school. She gets food as well, but only after the family has finished eating.
I will soon put pictures online!
Tomorrow I will be in New York for 2 days and be back home on Thursday.
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July 16th, 2009 at 15:24
(general, Haiti)
I was a bit silent in the last month, because I worked on some commercial work.
Soon I will be back in Haiti - but only for 10 days beginning of August. I don’t think I will take my laptop with me, so I will tell you about it when I’m back and show you new work on my website.
Here are a few shots of a portrait session that I had with Mathei Grosch - a belgian politician - last week.
————
Here a few pics that I shot for Kelleter, a backery in Eupen, my hometown.
4 Comments
May 22nd, 2009 at 08:35
(Haiti)
Many things happened since I came back from Haiti. I didn’t stop in Miami as planned as I had to return back home to help a friend in need. This was much more complicated than I expected and I got myself many problems and my life fell into an extreme chaos. Now I finally find my normal life back (what is normal?), or maybe it’s better to say that I find my energy back.
In the meantime I had some of my Haiti pictures published in the Sunday Times and I have gotten a grant from the “fondation de la vocation belge” to go back to Haiti (So I will go back still this year - probably in September-October).
I will leave Belgium to go to India on Sunday evening - and I am looking forward to that. I cannot publish the pictures on my blog before they appeared in Geo magazine, so you will have to wait a bit longer for pictures this time. But I will try to update my blog with the experiences I make in India. The city I will go to is Ahmedabad.
Because of all the chaos in the last weeks, I didn’t work a lot on my Haiti pictures; to bring order to them and publish them on my homepage. I will do that after I return from India in two weeks.
1 Comment