Abigail Hadeed (Trinidad & Tobago)
Artist Statement: Both born and formed on an island, my process is much like the sea … Fluid and surging. I have been working consistently and widely for over three decades; from steel bands and traditional mas to Trinidad theatre, to the indigenous people of Guyana and the Caribbean descendants in Central America, to the once outlawed spiritual practice of Orisha and my ever-evolving experience of water. These bodies of work, like bodies of water, are restless and ongoing, changing form and location but, inevitably, also returning. An outlier at heart, I am drawn to the overlooked: people on the periphery, mundane objects, flowers long past their bloom.
Bio: Abigail Hadeed is a Trinidadian photographer and producer who has been documenting the Caribbean and the Americas for the past 30 years. She is synonymous with her black and white photographs of traditional carnival, steelbands, theatre, Caribbean descendants in Central America (Trees Without Roots, published in 2006), and the indigenous people of Guyana’s Rupununi savannah (Commonwealth Photographic Awards winner, 2006). Hadeed’s archives owe much to her ability to discover people and places at the crossroads of an unresolved past and an impending future, torn between pain and possibility, disquiet and hope. Her deeply felt images are the fusing of eye and instinct, a stalking through shadow and light of what can only be glimpsed.
In 2020, Hadeed received two honourable mentions for her work in the International Photography Awards, ( Still Life Still Lives | Not so Enchanted )and the Budapest Photography Awards (The Island and I are One). In 2021, Cornell University’s Dark Laboratory awarded Hadeed’s ‘Warriors of Huracán’ with the first prize in the inaugural photography prize.