Audubon’s Haiti
An entrepreneur, hunter, woodsman, scientist, and artist — John James Audubon, famous for his epic The Birds of America, is a figure intimately associated with a certain idea of what it means to be American. And like many of the country’s icons, he was also an immigrant. Christoph Irmscher reflects on Audubon’s complex relationship to his Haitian roots.
John James Audubon, ca. 1850, photographed by Mathew Brady
In the summer of last year major protests erupted in Haiti as the government announced a sharp increase in fuel prices, forced to do so by an agreement with the International Monetary Fund that ended costly subsidies for petroleum products. After the suspension of the price hike and the prime minister’s reluctant resignation, the country has returned to an uneasy calm, as if everyone were waiting for the next match that lights the fuse.
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American Flamingo, plate 413 from Audubon’s The Birds of America
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