The Afflicted Yard
Interview for Clark Magazine France - March 08

Q. Can you introduce yourself to our readers. How did you started as a photographer ?

My name is Peter Dean Rickards and I’m a photographer based in Kingston. I put the word photographer in italics because it was really a great big accident. I was actually planning to be something very different – a history or politics lecturer at the university here. But I got bored and dropped out of my post graduate program. I then began playing with computers and working at a dub studio in Kingston where I first started to fiddle with cameras.

My ‘job’ there was to webcast live signals from sound systems to the Internet, and one of the things I had to do was to show the online audience what was going on. That’s how I started shooting on a regular basis which eventually led to the odd photographer life I didn’t really anticipate. I don’t regret it. I’ve seen some interesting things, but I never guessed I would be doing this for a living.

Q. Jamaica is strongly associated with the guns & weed stereotype. And it seems that people doesn’t want to know anything else about this place. Isn’t it boring ?

I guess that is pretty boring. But when you consider the kind of information that flows outward from this island, it’s almost understandable. To an outsider, Jamaica (and more specifically Kingston) must seem like something equivalent to Iraq. However, while there’s some truth in these common stereotypes (particularly the notion of a ‘gun culture’) - Jamaica remains one of the most diverse, weird and beautiful places you could ever visit.

Again, this is not to ignore the unacceptable level of violent crime that is ever present, but when you hear about it every day, one tends to get desensitized. I assume my opinion will change when it’s my turn to stare down the barrel of a gun with a 15 year old crackhead on the other end.

Also, I don’t think it’s entirely true that people only want to know about the stereotypes. Perhaps you mean the media but let’s face it, that’s what mainstream media does. I just wish they did a bit more research into some of those ‘Inside Jamaica’ type reports and tried be a little more balanced.

Q. As a photographer, is it hard not to fall into this “cliché” trap ?

Of course, but then my work is also form of a media (albeit an alternative sort), and media is usually cliché. However, since I don’t answer to an editor or worry about restrictions placed upon photographers who work at the local newspapers, my subject matter is based entirely on things that I find interesting or unusual.

A lot also comes down to the edit and hopefully an ability to choose pictures that don’t look like everyone else’s. Even if the subject matter could be construed as cliché (ie: ganja and guns), I try to give it a personal spin.

Q. Let’s talk about the ” Friday morning in Porus ” serie. Why did you choose this subject ? In your mind, does this subject, a slaughterhouse, is a metaphor for something else ?

No, there’s no metaphor at play there. Not intentionally anyway. I chose the subject because I was always a little fascinated with slaughterhouses, and in Jamaica, there’s quite a few that still do things the old fashioned way – that is – a knife to the throat. I figured it might be an interesting departure from the things I shoot in Kingston, and since I knew someone who knew the butchers I just went there with not really knowing how I would react to the scenes that I knew I was going to see.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t have any adverse reactions to the butchering despite a childhood memory of seeing a large pig getting its throat cut on a farm in St. Thomas. I remember I vomited for uncontrollably for about fifteen minutes then.

This time around it all seemed like work and in all honesty, the animals didn’t seem to suffer much. The guys who did the killing were pretty skilled and the pigs would die within about 20 seconds if they were stabbed properly. Later on when I looked at the photographs I thought that one of the pigs looked like he was smiling. Then again they were yanking his ears back, so probably not.

Q. Please tell us a bit about the Porus location.

The market was in a rural town called Porus. It’s located in the parish on Manchester, which is pretty close to Mandeville. The market itself has its slaughtering day on Friday, thus the title of the series Friday Morning Market. Other than that, there’s not much to say about Porus except that it’s pretty in parts and really boring in other parts. It’s sort of like talking about a rural road with a few buildings, a bank machine and bad cellular reception.

The slaughterhouse itself starts moving at around 5 am when farmers start to bring their livestock in for butchering. An inspector hangs around till about 11 stamping purple ink on the meat before sending it off to be sold. They butcher cows, goats and pigs there and there’s only two guys who really know what they’re doing as it relates to the actual slaughter. Everyone else just helps to drag the beasts around or cut them up after they’re dead. If you stick a large pig wrong, it can go berserk and actually kill someone. They tell me it’s happened before and when you see the size of some of these things it’s not hard to believe.

Q. You have made pictures of various reggae / dancehall artists. Which one is your favorite, as a person ? And do you have a funny/strange story to tell about one of them ?

I get along very well with Tanya Steven’s, Ninjaman and Spragga Benz. The best thing I heard about Spragga is that he couldn’t be found an hour before he was to perform at some place in New York and the promoter was losing his mind looking for him all over the hotel. As the story goes, there was a Polka convention going on in one of the auditoriums and about 20 minutes before he was to be on stage, Spragga was spotted inside the auditorium- arm in arm with two old polish ladies dancing to Polka.

Ninjaman is of course the, most unpredictable character in the dancehall world and maybe in Jamaica itself. How many artists can start a dangerous stampede; crash a car at high speed into a house; get chopped up by his girlfreind’s relatives; shoot up a bar (because someone would lend him a pair of scissors) and then tell the authorities on national television that ‘bad man nah go jail on weekends!” Just one –Ninja.

Q. Since start, you show all your work through Internet. How is this new-media important in your work ?

For me it’s very important. It’s how I get my work out and it kind of makes the playing field a little more level for people living in the third world. The advantages for a photographer are obvious but as helpful as it is, I find it a bit too addictive and it’s probably going to f*** up my eyes.

Q. You’re releasing a book. What are your next projects ? I’ve heard you planned to make a movie.

I have a gallery show coming up in Toronto in May 2008 and I’m re-launching a magazine that I started in 2004 called FIRST. I made 40,000 copies of this thing in 2005 but this time around I’ll publish most of the magazine online with a printed annual edition. My intention is to create a magazine based in Kingston that publishes content that can attract so-called first world advertisers.

Although there’s plenty of sites based in Jamaica I can’t think of one (not even the media houses) that have been able to successfully create content that is able to walk the line between Jamaican/Caribbean content and content that serves a wider demographic - (excluding porn of course). This is what I plan to do with the new version of First – compete.

As for making movies, that’s the ultimate goal for me, but it’s still a distance away. Before I can write and develop films I have to stop talking so many photographs. That’s difficult because photography happens to pay the bills (that and my credit cards). If I could, I would give up photography today and go right into making films. But that’s not my reality yet. I have to sell a few more photos of dead pigs.

Q. What are the best things about Jamaica ? And the worst ones ?

Good : The women are pretty. The food is good, especially the coffee. No snow. It’s nice in the evenings.

Bad: Gunmen. Road’s made in the 50s. Potholes. Unregulated landlords. People who clap when the plane lands.

Q. Any final word you’d like to say ?

No.