O presente ensaio fotográfico foi produzido em 2017, no primeiro dia do spring break - férias escolares de verão - em Ocho Rios. Também conhecida como Ochi, a cidade Jamaicana é marcada pela ostensiva presença da indústria turística, sua orla é privatizada e tomada por um porto de cruzeiros e diversos resorts all inclusive.
Com a privatização de quase todo o litoral jamaicano e a forte publicidade em torno da construção de um paraíso onde haveria apenas "mar, areia e sol", o que se constrói historicamente é uma visualidade excludente, onde os nativos são eliminados das imagens e apenas alguns turistas brancos ocupam a praia.
O spring break - férias de verão - altera as dinâmicas de uso dos espaços públicos da cidade, sobretudo das praias, cuja ocupação cotidiana no resto do ano é majoritariamente tomada pelo turismo, tensionando as barreiras impostas pela indústria turística ao contrariar o objetivo principal das políticas restritivas de uso da praia: eliminar a presença dos nativos.
No ensaio apresentado a ordem visual é invertida e os nativos são apresentados como protagonistas das imagens: a praia ocupada por corpos negros, jamaicanos, autônomos, sem uniformes, sem as cores Rastafari, sem frutas tampando seus rostos, sem brancos no primeiro plano - o contrário do que se vê usualmente na construção visual jamaicana.
O que propõe aqui é a construção de um "espaço de aparição", pensando um regime de visibilidade atualizado e político, partindo de uma estética anti-fetichista, capaz de romper com estereótipos, e onde o direito de aparecer, se dê também como uma forma de resistir.
OCHI
This photo series took place on the first day of the 2017 spring break - summer school holidays - in Ocho Rios, a former fishing village located on the northern coast of Jamaica. With a population of 9,800 inhabitants, the city is Jamaica's second most tourist destination, receiving the largest flow of cruises along the entire coast. Ochi is marked by the ostensive presence of the tourist industry, a state and market partnership that privatized the coastal area introducing all inclusive five stars resorts that holds private stretches of beach for the exclusive use of the guests.
Throughout the last years the tourism industry tried to shape and represent the island as a “large resort”, where there is only "sun, sea and sand" and no natives. In this scenario, the bodies that are more commonly represented in the popular images of the country are those of white tourists enjoying natural beauties, while the black natives appear mainly as guides, waiters, fruits and tourist craft sellers or are eliminated from the images.
The spring break - summer school holidays - changes the dynamics of the use of public spaces in the Jamaican cities, especially the beach area, whose daily occupation during the rest of the year is mostly taken by tourism and its public. In this sense, the spring break can be considered as an event that stresses the barriers imposed by the tourist industry as it makes possible to counter the main objective of beach access restrictive control policies: to eliminate the presence of the natives.
What is proposed here is the construction of a "space of appearance", a regime of up-to-date and political visibility, starting from an anti-fetishistic aesthetic, capable of breaking with stereotypes, and where the right to appear, is also given as a way of resisting.
Looking forward to seeing Jamaican Island's most important Rastafarian camp of the Bobo Shanti order, I head to the front door, enter the reception and reverence Priest Sheppard. We pray together, facing east, towards Africa. I follow the Bobo Shanti brethren (also called Bobos), who make the "trinity" sign with their hand, and then one of the priests corrects me, showing that I should put my left hand over my heart. Each man make his own pray aloud. We follow the prayer and at the end they all say together with a deep voice that vibrates throughout the room: Selassie I Jah Rastafari!
The Bobo Hill community is located in the mountains of Bull Bay, 9 miles from Kingston, Jamaica's capital. Founded in 1978 by the leader Emmanuel Charles Edward (later called King Emmanuel), the community gathers practitioners of the Rastafari movement around a exegesis of the Old Testament and other biblical texts. According to the Bobo Shanti, the story told in the bible about the persecution of the Israelites by the Romans is actually an allegory of the process of slavery suffered by the black population. In this sense, the true messiah is the Black Christ (also called Negus), in the image of his persecuted children.
The main focus of Bobo Shanti cosmology and political organization is repatriation, that is, the return of blacks in diaspora to the African continent. From this agenda the Bobo Shanti demands – from the Jamaican government and from Nation States that played a leading role in the transatlantic slave trade – reparation for the damage suffered by slavery. The Rastafari movement in Jamaica has suffered since its inception in 1930 with the coronation of Tafari Makonen (Haile Selassie I) - harsh persecution by the Jamaican government and colonial authorities who sought to contain their anti-systemic practices and discourses.
Nowadays, Bobo Shanti's main agendas, includes the sacramental use of cannabis, territorial autonomy and self-government, and especially the demands for repatriation and reparation. The Bobo Shanti have already made several requests to Jamaican government agencies and international entities such as the UN to meet their central demand: the process of reparation and repatriation.
The ongoing project proposes to create a space of appearance to this community over which there is scarce visual, documentary or ethnographic material, and is little known outside the Rastafarian practicing circles.
