Jean-Luc ASSOR - Thriving Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is thriving ! Like a piece of vintage luxury watch mechanics, people from Guadeloupe are complex, subtle, torn between the ghost of past drama and their immarcessible will to survive, move ahead and thrive. Partly broken here and there, beautiful with a splendid patina, ruggedized, but most importantly energetically rebuilding and redefining themselves.

This project has been realized using selected negative films stocks (Kodak Portra 400, Washi X, Cinestill 50 and Kodak Ektachrome 100) combined with the Minolta SRT 303 camera and the Rokkor MD 24 mm 2.8 Lens, giving the picture a unique color, sharpness, and contrast look.

Rue Gosset, Downtown Pointe-A-Pitre

Traveler, the Guadeloupe that you love is here to stay, with scenic landscapes, beaches and all the bells and whistles folklore !

It looks like the way of living will never change ; you can frequently cross street dealers ("lolos") in the streets of Pointe-A-Pitre even if the town is surrounded by gigantic malls ; the traditional housing, made out of wood and metal sheets, is pervasive to the island, in each and every city centers as well as in the country side.

Guadeloupe looks stuck in the past.

If you dig a little deeper, there is a chance that you approach the island's natives and get bewitched by their smile ; you might be mistaken and fall into exuberance and "Joie de vivre" clichés. In fact, people from Guadeloupe are full of nostalgia, blues, saudade, with the remembering of a Golden Age, exemplified by so many novels such as Joseph Zobel's Diab' La (taking place in Martinique during WWII), when their enslaved ancestors were freed and settled down in the hills and shores, building their houses with four big rocks foundations so they could be moved time to time to a better place. If the living conditions were tough, people could feed their family with the "jardins créoles" and catch some of (just a tiny bit of) the sugar cane and rum industry's wealthiness.

You might struggle to realize how much Guadeloupe, West Indies in fact, has already taken the modern world by storm, with its cosmogony, spirituality and growth mindset ...

You will also struggle to understand how much Guadeloupe is a tough country, where natives have been relentlessly fighting to domesticate their environment, which you don't have to look too long to be exposed to its multiple cracks ...

As mentioned in above forewords, Guadeloupe natives are energetically rebuilding and redefining themselves ; colourful evidences of this will to survive, move ahead and thrive are the mural paintings phenomenon currently happening in Guadeloupe. Paintings have popped up everywhere in the island, giving a second life to abandoned houses, decommissioned buildings and every possible piece of wall.

Here are a set of murals that exemplifies Thriving Guadeloupe.