SAN­DRA L BLOOD

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The Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain re­cent­ly played host to a much deep­er in­sight in­to the im­mense beau­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, as cap­tured through the lens of cul­tur­al doc­u­men­tar­i­an and ex­pert en­gi­neer Richard Ramirez.

The ex­hi­bi­tion, This Is Us Through the Eyes of Richard Ramirez, was col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly pre­sent­ed with the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and NA­PA.

Said to be the first of its kind on this scale in T&T in which an en­tire body of work is print­ed di­rect­ly on­to glass, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 pho­to­graph­ic im­ages of vary­ing sizes and four of Ramirez’s books are show­cased.

“My aim has nev­er been sole­ly to pro­duce books or pho­tographs,” said Ramirez.

“But to help peo­ple recog­nise the val­ue of what be­longs to them.”

View­ers said they re­alised that the ex­hi­bi­tion is not mere­ly a dis­play of pho­tographs but, as Ramirez as­sured, “it’s an in­vi­ta­tion to pause, look again, and recog­nise that her­itage is not guar­an­teed to sur­vive un­less it’s val­ued, record­ed, shared, and car­ried for­ward.”

They said they al­so re­alised an­oth­er of Ramirez’s as­sur­ances: the name is not a slo­gan, it’s a state­ment of recog­ni­tion, and you tru­ly see your­selves, your fam­i­lies, your mem­o­ries, your sto­ries and T&T in the im­ages, which bring to­geth­er the T&T in­her­it­ed, the T&T that’s some­times over­looked, and the T&T that must be pre­served.

Oth­er view­ers men­tioned that they lit­er­al­ly iden­ti­fied land­marks, liv­ing jew­els, tra­di­tions, T&T’s night skies, and echoes of old sto­ries, as promised.

View­ers were mys­ti­fied by many im­ages, one be­ing an as­tropho­tog­ra­phy shot of the Milky Way seen through palm trees in To­co on a full moon night, and an­oth­er, a dis­tin­guished place of wor­ship, the Mount Saint Bene­dict Monastery, to which Ramirez clar­i­fied.

He spoke about the spe­cial glass-print­ing process, its im­pact on im­ages, what hap­pens to pho­tographs in this for­mat, and ap­pro­pri­ate ma­te­r­i­al de­ci­sions.

Ramirez said ex­hibit­ing didn’t just hap­pen. It was a jour­ney from pho­tog­ra­phy in­to books, from books in­to video, from video in­to pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion, and now in­to ma­jor ex­hi­bi­tion spaces.

“It’s been ex­tra ef­fort dri­ven by pas­sion, of­ten built in the spaces be­tween pro­fes­sion­al oblig­a­tions, fam­i­ly life, trav­el, re­search, writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, pro­duc­tion, and the con­stant push to com­plete work to a stan­dard that re­spects the sub­jects be­ing doc­u­ment­ed,” elab­o­rat­ed Ramirez.

He said stu­dents and schools in groups are spe­cial­ly catered to via book­ings, and he is par­tic­u­lar­ly thrilled to wel­come them, just as they are ex­cit­ed when en­grossed in im­ages and books, and en­joy his pho­tog­ra­phy talks.

Some cor­po­rate ex­ec­u­tives com­mend­ed a group of teens—twin Danielle and Dar­lette Babb, Jay­den Clarke, and Harley Adams—along­side adult Melis­san Daniel, who, fol­low­ing their tour of im­ages, set­tled among the book dis­play and be­came in­trigued by Folk­lore Spir­it of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ramirez said it was nev­er his in­ten­tion to be­come a cul­tur­al doc­u­men­tar­i­an, but fail­ing to cap­ture beau­ti­ful el­e­ments of coun­tries in a deeply mean­ing­ful way dur­ing his in­ter­na­tion­al work­ing res­i­den­cy led him to cor­rect that dur­ing a va­ca­tion in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon.

He pur­chased his first DSLR cam­era, which com­plete­ly al­tered the di­rec­tion of his cre­ative life in ways unimag­in­able, and every­thing he cap­tured and cap­tures was and con­tin­ues to be done in a man­ner in which he could prop­er­ly share with friends and fam­i­ly, or even sit with lat­er in life as a record of where he had been and what he had seen.

He added that he then be­gan to un­der­stand that the cam­era was more than a de­vice for tak­ing pic­tures, but a pow­er­ful tool for see­ing, re­mem­ber­ing, shar­ing, and even­tu­al­ly pre­serv­ing.