When Images in Haiti Fail: The Photograph of Charlemagne Péralte

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1919, the US Marines took a staged photograph of the recently killed insurgent Charlemagne Péralte in order to impede other oppositional fighters during the US Occupation of Haiti. Local viewers interpreted the reproduced and circulated photograph of Péralte crucified to a door as a sign of his martyrdom and strength. While scholars most often turn to Philomé Obin’s circa 1970 painting Cruxification de Charlemagne Péralte pour la Liberté to discuss the generative possibilities of the photograph, I return my attention to the photograph and the earlier context of its making, display, and distribution. Turning back to the visual field of the photograph and its moment allows for distinctive insight. Specifically, my interest lies in what happens when images in Haiti during the US Occupation failed to operate as intended by the Marines. It explores how the contours of this kind of failure become a site for reinterpretation. I privilege examples of how Haitians assert their engagement with the visual by focusing on descriptions, responses, and references to images. Doing so enlarges one’s perception of aspects of the visual that are not built, painted, or made by Haitians but, as I argue, were seen and reinterpreted by some of the country’s early twentieth-century marginalized viewers for their own benefit.