Beginning in 1983, Danny Lyon sojourned several times in Haiti to document life under dictatorship, and in its aftermath. He made this photograph in a marketplace one month after Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier fled the country, ending twenty-nine years of family rule. The mental focus and physical intimacy of these praying young women form an image of collective inner strength: history’s antidote to chronic criminal misgovernment.
Danny Lyon (b. 1942), Haitian Women, March 1986. Gelatin silver print. Purchased as the gift of Ronald R. Kass. 2016.157.
© Danny Lyon/Magnum Photos