Ild Tillmann is an author and documentary photographer, born and raised in Hungary, but currently based in New York. She has completed a graduate degree in Africana Studies, but left the field of academia and switched to multimedia storytelling to explore life by merging art with documentary.

“Over the past two years, I have been working with Junior St Vil, a Haitian journalist, on a freelance project in Haiti. In January of 2020, the month which marked the ten-year memorial of the devastating earthquake that hit the capital, Port-au-Prince, we spent three weeks travelling around the country and taking photographs. The purpose of the trip was to prepare a photo-memorial with a difference; rather than focusing on images of past destruction, we wanted to present people who live, love and struggle in Haiti today. We wanted to honour the lives lost in the earthquake by focusing on life as currently lived.

Our goal was twofold: to take images that tell stories set in Haiti without a sensationalist or victimising frame and to reflect on human experiences of hardship, achievement, strength and love that have relevance beyond the geographic boundaries of the island. We selected images of Haitian lives, black lives, human lives - images which, while taken in a specific location, reflected aspects of the human condition across time and space.”

Ildi Tillmann