After arriving yesterday, we paid a visit to downtown Port-au-Prince today to get a general impression of the place. The feeling of 'culture shock' persists, and the things we see will leave some lasting memories. The photos in the slideshow below will look familiar, as many other (and better) photographers have taken similar shots, but it still gives an overview of how things are now, July 2011, a year-and-a-half year after the earth quake. And of course it also proves we haven't taken the grant money to hang out at a beach resort in the Dominican Republic.
The project itself is starting to take shape. We're meeting with a very talented comic artist on Wednesday, and lining up meetings with journalists and cartoonists for the rest of the week. In addition to the main project, finding and pairing a Haitian comic artist and journalist to do a long-running piece of comics journalism on life in Haiti, we'll also be using our time here to interview cartoonists and other people of interest.
The first one is Jerry Rosembert, better known as just 'Jerry', the name with which he signs his art. He is a graffiti artist from Port-au-Prince, who does murals on social issues around the city. We hope to do an interview with him in the next few days, which we'll be posting on the blog together with a slideshow of photos of his work we've taken.
