The Haiti in Maggie Steber's Eyes

. . . The people themselves, they live these moments of beauty.

Maybe it's an audacious idea to think that beauty can exist 

in places like [Haiti] but in fact it does. . . Just because we can't

see [beauty in Haiti] doesn't mean it doesn't exist,

and in Haiti, it exists in ways that we will never ever see

 and never understand. . . .

~Maggie Steber

For more than two decades, the much-honored, award-winning documentary photographer Maggie Steber has filmed in Haiti, concentrating her camera not only on Haiti's suffering and the evidence of the island nation's considerable socio-political problems but also on what she calls "the moments described by the beauty of the Haitian people". 

In the Audacity of Beauty, her 20:41-minute film below, Steber documents — and movingly articulates for us — some of the vibrancy, joy, and pride she sees in Haitians' daily lives. While photographing in the countryside, Steber says, she found "exquisite beauty" in the smallest moments. Two years after the devastating 2010 earthquake, she relates, she still has "great hope for Haiti, and that's what the Audacity of Beauty is about, hope, and the ability of the people to describe themselves."

David Gonzalex, "Quietly Finding Haiti's Audacious Beauty", Lens Blog, The New York Times, May 25, 2012