Relics and Forgotten

Old lighthouses are broken down, and whitewashed, sterile structures take their places. Old French Colonial buildings are demolished for glass high-rises, 100 years of Caroni historical structures razed in a rush for new urban housing projects. Grass silos earmarked for demolition. Even an old church pictured above, a Trinidad heritage site in Macqueripe, has been allowed to collapse in on itself. The rare structures lucky enough to get some restorative work end up looking like caricatures of someone's demented sensibilities: the original design and materials shaped into a painted modern-day abomination. We are not at all First World in our appreciation of historical originations, or of the structures which remind us of them; in the gutters of the Third World we are firmly planted. Unless it's the Red House or the Prime Minister's Office, talismans of hegemonic power, "restoration" is synonymous with "demolition".

Rather than a celebration of our past, these pictures represent an etude, and a silent mockery; that our revels in the shining masonry of the present will crumble all too soon. Other pictures will follow in time.

- February 2007