I

 In a vision I saw the new kingdom, in which the living image of Amun is the first light of the sun every morning, anointing a sovereign at her prayers;  a princess who bestrides two generations; former and latter ages of gold.

 With her high priestess in front her, she parts the curtains of the dawn and approaches his altar. He rises at her entrance and brings the queen apparent one day closer to her coronation. 

This picture was from a shoot done early in 2011. The other model (the girl to the front) told me her name is Ideka which means ‘high priestess’. I promised her I would remember it in the event I have a daughter. When the idea for this story came, I remembered my high priestess.

Photographer: Keiron Riley

Art Director: Rubadiri Victor

“I love you as certain dark things are loved,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.”

- Paul Neruda

photographed by Mark Gellineau

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought, there are so many people in the world. There must be someone who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you’re out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.”

- Frida Kahlo

photographer: Elise Romany

]]> http://petitecareme.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/imaging-the-caribbean-21/feed/ 4 amandatmcintyre amanda t. mcintyre http://petitecareme.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/imaging-the-caribbean-20/ http://petitecareme.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/imaging-the-caribbean-20/#comments Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:28:52 +0000 Amanda T. Mc Intyre http://petitecareme.wordpress.com/?p=901 ]]> BLACK TEA 

Letter from V. Knight to Amanda

Thursday 23rd September, 2004

In my early French days one of the things I found most amusing was the French expression for Afternoon Tea was ‘le five o’clock’ five pronounced ’feev’, says something about the English Ritual and the absence of such in the French tradition. Actually, a number of cultures have the tea ritual: Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Middle Eastern for example. A social practice somewhat similar to the way we drink alcohol. Personally, since I have stopped drinking alcohol I have become quite a tea drinker and an authority on Teas. I could give you an extended lecture on the virtues of Assam as opposed to those of Darjeeling, Chinese as opposed to Ceylonese and the whole extensive range of English teas; they have a tea for every occasion and any time of day…

Continue to walk proudly in knowledge, beauty and always Love.

I IMAGE THE CARIBBEAN

My earliest memory of carnival is the hammer, as in the hammer that disappears at the end of David Rudder’s narrative calypso classic. I was four years old. My grandmother had a  small hammer in one of the cupboard drawers in the kitchen and she convinced me that it was the same one from the song. I believed that she had found the prize that everyone in Laventille was desperately searching for and hid it away. It was then that my wonder at carnival began. I really believed that we had, present in our home, a great magical charm… a power that I would one day inherit.

I IMAGE THE CARIBBEAN

Somewhere up in Laventille
Many years ago
A man had a hammer
Used to follow him to and fro
He used to use it to pound a pan
Or sometimes a stupid man
All in the savannah
Never miss Panorama
One day the old hammer just disappear
Some say that it vanish into thin air

…

From April of 85
Hammer went to sleep
After years of making noise,
Not even a peep
He used to move wid de dragon man
All through this soca land
Always on the scene
They used to control the barber-greene
But the dragon doh walk the trail no more
Who holding the hammer I want to know.

(‘Hammer.’ Rudder, David. 1986)

“prepare  a face to meet the faces that you meet”- T. S. Eliot

My face is more than what you see. It is the face that saw the best and the worse moments of this life. It is the face that was called: beautiful, ugly, too black, brownie, red generation, whore, angel, sweet, bitch, daughter, wife, friend, worse enemy, healer, destroyer, ignorant, brilliant, feel she better than everybody, dreamer, visionary, locked in the stasis that cripples the change that revolutions should bring.

A strange doll that never said, “mama,” in vain.

It is the face that has concealed the imagined and re-imagined worlds that I have created in my mental spaces. The face that has sanitized and made presentable to the public my uncensored opinions, my politics and the truth of me.

I IMAGE THE CARIBBEAN

photographer Luis Young

This year Robert Young  once again challenges his band members to cover their faces and deal with the issues that they have too long hidden away in the mind.

The band is ‘Vulgar Fraction’.

The presentation is ‘Face 12′.

The camp is located on Erthig Road in Belmont, Trinidad.

for more information call 721- 7616

photographer: brendan bhagan

make-up artist: jewel holder

“my wounds, my secret grief, my despair, my betrayal, my pain, my terror”

Every day I face all the truths about myself; the life I live in this woman’s body and the choices I made. Some details of experiences are hard to confront but the confrontation is necessary. Being estranged from my parents, love gained and love lost, the deaths in my family, losing communication with the people I knew as a child, the places I went to for comfort, the shelter I found; the whole of me.

I can pick and choose what I present to the world or I can live bravely broken and triumphantly torn.

This is my face. This is my body. This is my truth.

I IMAGE THE CARIBBEAN

Designer: Lupe Leonard

Photograher: Luis Young

]]> http://petitecareme.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/imaging-the-caribbean-16/feed/ 0 amandatmcintyre amanda t. mcintyre amanda t. mcintyre AMANDA MCINTYRE amanda t. mcintyre http://petitecareme.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/imaging-the-caribbean-12/ http://petitecareme.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/imaging-the-caribbean-12/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:45:44 +0000 Amanda T. Mc Intyre http://petitecareme.wordpress.com/?p=799 ]]> A NEST FOR THE BIRDS

If my life were a novel it would be in the genre of magical realism. Thirty years of having birds fluttering around in my mind has now manifested in my daily life. Since I got the two paintings from Danielle, blackbirds have been following me everywhere. They seem to be haunting me. From the time I leave home and until I come in, whenever I look around me they are there. I love them.  They are so soberly dressed yet they have such freedom of movement. The image of the black bird is my symbol. It is a representation of all my political concerns, my creative energy and the past that raised me up into this woman’s body.

I look at them hopping along side me on the pavement, hanging on electricity wires outside the school and waiting for me on my banister. I  fantasize that these are the very same birds from the paintings. I dream that they have escaped the art and are now engaging me in reality. I imagine that they are charms from another life; a life lived in the country of my imagination.

Danielle didn’t know me before I contacted her about purchasing the pieces after I saw them online and yet in her paintings my spirit was both captured and set free.

I IMAGE THE CARIBBEAN

taken from A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf