In the middle of Spirit Desire, a photo book on Haitian Vodoun, you see Sokari Ekine, the photographer, for the first time. Standing in the waters of Sodo, Haiti, she is metaphysically encountering Haitian ancestors in the liminal space between Africa and Haiti, where Haiti is Africa and Africa is Haiti. In what is, arguably, the most captivating and visually compelling photograph of the collection, the collision between composition, ritual, histories of enslavement, and intimacy is knowingly loud and silent. As you take in the photograph, the sound of the water crashing on the rocks crescendos out of the page and surrounds you; the silence of the water as it engulfs Ekine can be felt in your held breath.
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