Article
3/23/21

Investigative | Introspective

written by Jodi Minnis
edited by Adina Glickstein, Tanicia Pratt, and Lauren Perez

Photographic archives are unique in their ability to engage us with fragments of our past. Its viewers are transported to a time-space that invites them to animate subjects, reimagine  stories, and expand on landscapes beyond the frame. However, Trinidadian artist Rodell Warner is interested in new and innovative ways of approaching such work. 

In Augmented Archives, Warner refuses contextualization of the image’s contents, and instead, utilizes animation, colour, and sound to force investigation of their entire compositions. Dates, locations, and identities are purposely omitted, pushing viewers to conceive their own realities. The series becomes a mind-map, piquing curiosity and stretching our imagination to weave our own pattern of Caribbeanness.

At least, this was my experience with Warner’s work as a viewer. The digital fusion of image and technology becomes temporal, dissolving any linear sense of time. I mulled over one particular image for a long time. In Augmented Archives 020, a group of seamen stands in three small dinghies until I recognize one of their faces. A figure adorning a black top hat, black necktie, blue dress pants, and a red & black striped top - not your typical beachwear. Warner informed us that this particular photograph was taken in Nassau, the Bahamas around 1930. The original was titled, Diving for Coins - a photograph of six men eagerly awaiting coins to be thrown by tourists from incoming cruise ships.

Rodell Warner’s work reinvigorated my memories of the mysterious figure until my brain was able to connect the two (distant) dots. I first met this figure on a mural located in a private residence. Working at The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas, at that time, the curatorial team worked with art conservator Katrina Vanderlip to remove this mural which illustrated life in 1940s Nassau. The mural was first painted by American artist Kipp Soldwedel in 1941. In his iteration, the man wearing the top hat is painted floating in the water. There is only one dinghy and seven men are painted - three in the boat, four in the water. 

The earliest photograph of boys coin-diving in The Bahamas appears in 1901, published by the Detroit Publishing Company. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was common for photographers to be sent by US and UK advertising agencies to capture Bahamian life to encourage tourism. Subsequently, most photographs were printed as postcards — it is my theory that Soldwedel used postcards as reference material for his mural. 

Still, the question of why the gentleman wore his peculiar suit and tophat remains unanswered. In a natural domino effect of thoughts, I wondered why, between 1901 and 1950, seamen were still diving into the sea for coins thrown by tourists. The obvious answer would be because they needed it.  The economic standing of The Bahamas during the early 1900s suggests that coin-diving provided hope for financial survival.

Hurricanes destroyed sponge beds in the late 1920s, and the economic gain of the Prohibition era followed by The Wall Street Crash (1929) led to a Depression that directly impacted The Bahamas’ tourism industry. 

With unemployment at an all-time high, the social fabric of New Providence deteriorated. Tourism would not pick back up until 1937, with the help of an initiative led by Governor Sir Bede Clifford to establish a long-term plan for tourism. Even with the government’s success, Warner’s initial subjects resurface the 1950s film “Nassau in The Bahamas” by Central Films. Like Soldewedel’s mural, the film displayed life in 1950s New Providence with coin-diving once again highlighted.

Despite the end of the Depression, seamen continued coin-diving for almost fifty years. While this act signposts their apparent need for income, it was also likely pushed, through postcards, film, and adverts, to boost tourism in The Bahamas — eventually shifting the act into a need, in the form of entertainment.

Augmented Archives triggers this memory, probing me to search for these familiar figures through time. I am dared to ask questions if I am willing to do so. But before I may recall my subjects, Warner’s work invites me to be curious and wildly imaginative. Past and present collide, to perhaps invoke my own myths.

Rodell Warner (b. 1986) is a Trinidadian artist working primarily in new media and photography. His works have been exhibited at The Whitney Museum of American Art in the 2016 Dreamlands exhibition as part of the collective video project Ways of Something, at The National Gallery of Jamaica in the 2016 exhibition Digital, and at the 10th Berlin Biennale in 2018 in I’m Not Who You Think I’m Not #14. Rodell is a recipient of the 2011 Commonwealth Connections International Arts Residency, and the 2014 summer residency at NLS Kingston, and was commissioned in 2017 to create the Davidoff Art Edition, a series of five artworks printed onto a limited edition of five thousand boxes of luxury cigars and presented and sold at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Miami, and Basel. Rodell lives and works between Port of Spain in Trinidad, Kingston in Jamaica, and Austin, Texas, in the US.

Exhibition: Augmented Archives