Jeffrey Chock insists that he does not take photographs.- instead he makes photographs. And to make is to create something new, something different. With camera and the vagaries of natural light and shadow Jeffrey has created totally new experiences of the Trinidad Carnival.

Jeffrey sees Carnival almost as an essential human experience that is shared by many different peoples, each culture in its own way.and according to its own historical experiences. He interprets the Trinidad experience as the “aesthetic response” to colonialism.

Dr. Kim Johnson says of Jeffrey’s ‘works’ – “Stripped of Carnival’s noise and movement the masquerade is presented as symbols of what humanity could have been and momentarily reverts to. And, like all symbols. It is primarily visual; dreams or nightmare.

This collection is not a historical record but rather a spiritual and emotional experience. It begins with the blue-grey ambience of ‘jouvay’ the break of day, the start of the two day street carnival, when Trinidad receives and accepts the licence to ‘get on bad.’ It continues with frozen transformed images of bats and devils jab-jabs and sailors and American Indians ,. It backtracks to the steel band ‘panorama’ competitions and back again to the streets where devils and imps perform an intricate ceremony to cross a shallow city drain.

And then on to Tuesday the ‘mardi gras, the day of the‘pretty mas, ’but Jeffrey’s eyes and lens capture. not only the colour but the character and the statement of life and creativity that gives the Trinidad Carnival its own unique space in the carnivals of the world.

Artist and carnivalist Peter Minshall describes these works as’ “informed by a passion and depth of understanding and intimacy that is as revealing at times as a deeply held secret.”

Hardcover: ISBN 978-976-95137-4-1

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