Caribbean Beat — January/February 2017 (#143)

“My Carnival no
longer starts
or finishes”
Photographer Maria Nunes, celebrated
for her avid documentation of traditional
mas and steelpan, on her earliest Carnival
memories, her first encounter with
masqueraders from behind the camera, and
how Carnival has become her life — as told
to Nicholas Laughlin
One of my earliest childhood memories is seeing jabs in
Mayaro at Carnival time. I was maybe six, seven, eight
years old. It’s an indistinct memory — I can’t tell you
what they looked like — but it’s something that stayed with me:
these men playing jab, going house to house in Mayaro, and the
surprise element.
But my first truly formed, deep impression of Carnival was
that the year of [Peter Minshall’s Carnival King] The Sacred and
the Profane — that was 1982 — my father took me to the Kings
and Queens finals in the Savannah on Dimanche Gras. And I was
mesmerised by The Sacred and the Profane, and [masquerader]
Peter Samuel bringing the costume over all the photographers
at the edge of the stage. It’s a distinct memory. The way it was
set up then, the photographers were all down below the stage.
I remember the power of how he came on the stage. And he
moved those wings and brought the whole costume over the
photographers. My father never took me to Kings and Queens
prior to that, and I have no idea why he took me that year. And
after that, he died in June 1982.
My interest in photography was formed by a childhood of
having family holidays in Mayaro and Tobago documented and
put in an album every year. At university, I bought myself a
Pentax K1000 camera, which was a great first camera in the days
of film. I started to become really passionate about photography
when I was working at the St Andrew’s Golf Club [north of Port of
Spain], where I was the general manager. The lands around the
golf club are untouched forest, and on hikes I was struck by the
beauty of the interior of the forest. I had the club’s camera, and
that’s when I started to seamlessly take photographs.
Then at Carnival 2007 I spent Monday at a friend’s office on
Carlos Street [in Woodbrook, west Port of Spain]. We were there
just liming, eating, drinking, and I heard these whips cracking
outside. I thought, what is this? And I went outside to see jab jabs
beating up one another on Carlos Street. I was just mesmerised.
WWW.CARIBBEAN-AIRLINES.COM 61