“He stuck out his tongue as if to say, Ah give yuh that”: the photograph of a grease-covered jab molassie that Maria Nunes recalls in her interview To this day it reminds me that what I now take for granted, someday somebody sees for the first time. I ran for my camera, and those were my first photos in Carnival. Because of that, I went out exploring the streets, and took my first photographs of traditional jab molassies <strong>—</strong> the black car-grease ones <strong>—</strong> on the corner of Ariapita Avenue and French Street. I’ll never forget it, because there was this one man in total car grease, and I was glued to him. He had these horns that were like two cones. I’ve come to understand that people sense when you’ve zeroed in on them with your camera, even though they haven’t seen you yet. And that sense that passes between two people, I experienced for the first time that day. As he passed me, he turned around to give me a look, with a laugh, and he stuck out his tongue as if to say, Ah give yuh that. He was fully aware, I realised, that I had not moved my gaze from him. So that was the beginning. And around that time my path crossed with [photographer] Abigail Hadeed, and we must have spoken about my experience that Carnival. Because the big A lens for mas After years of working as a teacher, golfer, and golf club manager, Maria Nunes found a childhood fascination with photos turning into a professional interest. For the past decade, a major portion of her work has been devoted to documenting traditional performance traditions within Trinidad Carnival, from the blue devils of Paramin to individual performers like Tracy Sankar- Charleau (interviewed on page 56). Her already immense archive <strong>—</strong> Nunes says she has at least thirty hard drives full of still images and video <strong>—</strong> includes all aspects of arts and culture, but Carnival remains an obsession, and her images are among the most widely shared and discussed by contemporary mas aficionados. moment for me was that Abigail invited me the following year, in 2008, to go with her into downtown Port of Spain on Carnival Tuesday. That was what permanently changed my life. I don’t say that lightly. Whatever scales were on my eyes got peeled off, in a hurry. I experienced the heart of east Port of Spain in a whole different way, and sailor mas for the first time in any significant way. The people that I got to know then, I still know today. It was an introduction to a world, thanks to Abigail. And it proved to be such a big, big world. When I took the plunge in 2010 <strong>—</strong> after twenty years of a normal salaried life <strong>—</strong> into professional photography, I knew I had to have a website. That was the first way I started sharing my photography <strong>—</strong> I would share a link on Facebook and people would go to the website and comment on the galleries. I got a lot of encouraging feedback. And it went from there. maria nunes My exploration of blue devils continually fascinates me. I could never get tired of photographing that expression. The first time I photographed moko jumbies on a Carnival Saturday at Junior Carnival, that blew my mind. And I’m developing a relationship with Ronald Alfred’s jab jab band [based in Carapichaima, central Trinidad]. I’m always seeking an elusive photograph of the essence of that art of the whip in motion. How to convey it to people so they can hear the whip crack in the photo? Or the dance of the sailor? Those are the things I seek after. When I’m deep in the moment with a jab jab, with a moko jumbie, with a blue devil, is when I think I am most immersed in what I am doing. I want the performer to see how beautiful and amazing they are. In the photos, they see aspects of their performance they aren’t even aware of. From that first year I went into Port of Spain with Abigail, I remember feeling this terrible sadness at the end of Carnival. I wanted it to keep on going. Every year when Carnival ends, I feel I just want a little more time. It’s all crammed into such a concentrated period of time <strong>—</strong> I’m going day, night, day, night, for two weeks. But I also know that’s part of what it’s all about, and if there was more room to breathe, it wouldn’t be the same. It used to be I felt this terrible sadness. Now it’s just a continuum, because the relationships I have built with the people I have photographed, so many of whom are truly now my friends, are year-long relationships. So my Carnival no longer starts or finishes. It’s now my life. 62 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM
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