Showing Haiti on its own terms

National Geographic invited young people in Haiti to showcase the pride and beauty of their country via photography. Here are their photographs.

THE HAITIAN STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHERS RANGED IN AGE from 14 to their mid-30s, and they’d come from all parts of the country and from all backgrounds. Their mandate was so simple it verged on radical: To show the world Haiti as it is rarely seen—as they saw it. Not just a country of disasters, shocks, and aftershocks but also a place shot through with sunlight and glittering sea, a place stunned into focus by a child in an impeccable school uniform, rollicked by music and the seemingly spontaneous eruption of dancers blowing on bamboo trumpets through the haze of a street party. A place of pride and possibility.

“That’s good, because Haitians are tired of seeing stories in foreign papers about how helpless we are,” said Junior St. Vil, my translator and a travel consultant who has also embarked on a law degree. “There is so much beauty here, so much power.” (National Geographic excerpt)