Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

A strik­ing new pho­tog­ra­phy ex­hi­bi­tion ti­tled “This Is Us Through the Eyes of Richard Ramirez” has opened at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) Ho­tel, Port-of-Spain, mark­ing what or­gan­is­ers de­scribe as the first ex­hi­bi­tion of its kind in Trinidad and To­ba­go to fea­ture all works print­ed on glass.

The ex­hi­bi­tion, which drew steady in­ter­est on its first day, presents a bold vi­su­al ex­plo­ration of iden­ti­ty, so­ci­ety and every­day life through por­trai­ture, street im­agery and lay­ered ob­ser­va­tion­al pho­tog­ra­phy.

Cu­rat­ed by pho­tog­ra­ph­er Richard Ramirez, the col­lec­tion us­es its provoca­tive ti­tle as a con­cep­tu­al frame rather than a lit­er­al ref­er­ence, fo­cus­ing in­stead on how peo­ple see them­selves and their en­vi­ron­ment through frag­ment­ed, re­flec­tive vi­su­al sto­ry­telling.

Ramirez said the de­ci­sion to present the work en­tire­ly on glass was in­ten­tion­al and cen­tral to the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“This is the first time an ex­hi­bi­tion like this has been done on glass at the NA­PA Ho­tel. It changes every­thing about how you view the work, the light, the re­flec­tion, the depth,” he said.

He added that the ma­te­r­i­al choice was de­signed to shift how au­di­ences in­ter­act with pho­tog­ra­phy.

“When you move, the im­age moves with you. It’s not sta­t­ic any­more; it be­comes part of the space.”

Vis­i­tors on open­ing day moved through the ex­hi­bi­tion in steady num­bers, en­gag­ing with works that shift be­tween in­ti­ma­cy and dis­tance, en­cour­ag­ing view­ers to in­ter­pret mean­ing from frag­ments rather than a sin­gle nar­ra­tive.

Ear­ly re­ac­tions high­light­ed both the vi­su­al in­no­va­tion and emo­tion­al tone of the ex­hi­bi­tion.

“The glass makes it feel alive. You don’t just look at it, you ex­pe­ri­ence it,” said one vis­i­tor.

An­oth­er at­tendee added: “It feels dif­fer­ent from any­thing we’ve seen lo­cal­ly. The light changes every­thing.”

Ramirez con­firmed that the ex­hi­bi­tion will run for two weeks, con­clud­ing on May 29, with week­day open­ing hours from 9 am to 12 noon and 4 pm to 7 pm and week­end hours from 10 am to 4 pm.

The morn­ing ses­sions are aimed pri­mar­i­ly at schools, while the af­ter­noon hours are de­signed to ac­com­mo­date work­ing vis­i­tors af­ter of­fice hours.