photo: Jennifer Trainor
Two weeks after a 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti in January, local trauma nurse Jennifer Trainor was on the scene to coordinate relief efforts in Port-au-Prince, a landscape she likened to a warzone.
“It looked like bombs had just dropped out of the sky,” she said. “People that I know were living in the streets, it was just massive devastation and just pure chaos.”
The bedlam though, wasn’t a huge shock for Trainor, after all she’s spent the past six years living and working in and out of Haiti on medical relief projects, and mayhem is just a part of everyday life.
“There’s no infrastructure, the government is pretty non-existent,” she said.
For Trainor, providing aid to those who need it most doesn’t stop once she returns to U.S. soil. As a photographer, she has documented her medical relief projects in Haiti and Ghana and sells her images - donating all proceeds to projects sponsored by the international relief organization Ananda Marga Universal Relief Team (AMURT).
Her September fundraiser will feature a series of 50-60 photographs. Profits will help purchase essentials such as medical supplies, medications or paying a nurse’s salary in Haiti.
“I’m not a big corporation (the money) doesn’t get lost in pencils and stamps, it goes to that man to buy sutures to suture up his face,” Trainor said while pointing to a black and white close-up of a man suffering from a head laceration. The money “goes right to the people that you’re seeing in a way,” she said.
Her mostly black and white images are snapshots of life in Haiti, Ghana and Mexico – children with intense looks stare back from the frame, a baby splashes around in a tub of water, happy to enjoy a clean bath on a hot day, and half-naked men crowded behind bars in a Haitian psychiatric hospital.
“Sometimes I find a good portrait can say much more than I can. Sometimes I have seen situations that are so grim that I can’t make sense out of them and so I take a photo of it,” Trainor said. “I find photography to be a wonderful way to pay witness and my photos are always meant to honor.”
A fundraiser featuring Trainor’s photos and live music will be held at Espresso Art, 944 University Blvd., Sept. 11 from 7-10 p.m. Photos will hang at the café and are available for purchase through the end of September.
