SEUL LE COUTEAU CONNAÎT LE SECRET AU COEUR DE L'IGNAME
Christian Courrèges made 100 portraits in Haiti. He followed the same procedure one hundred times: around noon, when the light is strongest, in the shade. One hundred times Courrèges tried to get inside the skin of the Haitians, behind the mask, close to their soul. They look back proudly or suspiciously, with curiosity or dismissively; whether with a frown or a smile, always very penetratingly and intense. Yet Courrèges did not succeed in penetrating to their core. However close up he photographed, the eyes did not let him through. At the most the pupils of the eyes reflect his own silhouette. That was the border that could not be crossed. Courrèges knew that would happen. As the Haitians say, and as the title of this photo series reports, ‘only the knife knows the secret of the heart of the yam’.
