Laura Heyman, Pa Bouje Ankò

A conversation between Richard Fleming and Laura Heyman about her photo portraiture project Pa Bouje Ankò (translation: "don't move again"), a title referencing Heyman's instructions to the participants sitting for their portrait given the slow shutter speed of Heyman's vintage camera. The series aims to move beyond the typical, voyeuristic photo journalism images representing Haiti in the media today.

In late 2009, Heyman came to Port-au-Prince to participate in the first Ghetto Biennale, opening a formal portrait studio in the Grand Rue neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, where she photographed members of the community in black and white with an 8 x 10 camera, processing the film in her hotel bathtub, and giving out prints to participants. Since then the pool of participants in Heyman's project has expanded to include not only members of the Grand Rue neighborhood, but missionaries, NGO employees, USAID subcontractors, U. N. staff, local politicians and businessmen. The resulting images form a typology updating August Sander’s People Of The 20th Century for the age of globalization.

Heyman is based in Syracuse, New York. Selected solo exhibitions include The Deutsch Polen Institute, Darmstadt, Germany, Ampersand International Arts, San Francisco, CA, Senko Studio, Viborg, Denmark, Light Work Gallery, Syracuse New York, Silver Eye Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA, Artspace, Raleigh, NC and the Philadelphia Photographic Arts Center, Philadelphia, PA. Selected group exhibitions include Laguna Art Museum, Laguna, CA, Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Small A Projects, Portland, OR, Thomas Kellner Studio, Siegen, Germany, The United Nations, New York, NY, and The National Portrait Gallery, London, UK.

She is the recipient of the Light Work Mid-Career Artist Grant, Silver Eye Grant and New York Foundation for the Arts Strategic Opportunity Stipend. Her work has been reviewed and profiled in The New Yorker, Contact Sheet, Frontiers, and ARTnews.

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