Peter Dean Rickards

These are the striking words of a Jamaican man, Peter Dean Rickards, who takes equally striking and somewhat discordant photographs of the sights he feels particularly representative of his homeland. Yet to call him a photographer might be a bit of a sacrilege. Peter also writes and is the editor of “FIRST”, a bi-monthly magazine based in Jamaica. “It’s hard for me to think of myself as a photographer. When someone calls me a photographer I tend to cringe since I don’t take photography all that seriously.” So then why take his work seriously?

Far from perfecting the art of geography, I had always been confused as to where the original Kingston was. I lived in West London for my first year of schooling, and as a result, assumed that Kingston was a suburban hamlet down the Thames. You can imagine my confusion as to why this upper middle class town known for its shopping, cinemas and nightclubs, was referenced in numerous advertisements for reggae music festivals. Regardless of my ignorance to the multiplicity of Kingstons in existence, it is questionable whether I or anybody else in the Western mainstream would be able to distinguish the tourist-friendly, Bob Marley and jerk chicken depiction of Kingston, Jamaica from what Rickards presents as his reality living within the city.

This city, where an average of four murders take place everyday, strays far from the glossy, travel agency stereotypes in which many people believe. Rickards captures the violent passion of the human landscape on the streets of Kingston almost in the same way an eyeball collects and transmits information, allowing the audience to decipher a deeper meaning, if something deeper is indeed required. Because Rickards’ perspective is forced visually upon his audience, his audience is forced to commiserate with a returning national that seems at once disenchanted and excitedly proud.

Rickards admits that his family was somewhat shocked by his decision to return to Kingston after having spent twenty years in Toronto, but he followed his inspiration nonetheless, transferring from the University of Toronto to the University of the West Indies to study politics and history. As a result of his educational background, many of his projects seem to have an air of thinly disguised politik, focusing not only on the natural aesthetics of his city, but also social and racial divides, which Rickards suggests all fall under the category of human behavior, the true object of his interest. The atmosphere thus created might make some uncomfortable, but at least it’s real.

Recounting an early memory, Rickards describes his first experience of finding the art in life. “This kid at school said something to me kind of artful once. He said: ‘I like the rain because then, nobody can see me cry.’ Artful but really lame, so we beat him to a pulp with a rusty bicycle chain.” I don’t know Rickards very well, but this seems to sum up, for me, the dual nature behind his work, and perhaps even art in general. It is about everyday life and human emotions explored from new perspectives, and that elicits excited response, equally ugly, equally beautiful. You may not know where Kingston is, but this at least will allow you to relate.

www.afflictedyard.com

asterisk by Erin Orozco