Bryan Meltz

AFTER: Images from Haiti

AFTER Images from Haiti is a collection of images taken during the twelve months following the devastating earthquake that struck near the capital of Port au Prince on January 12, 2010. From the hills of the Central Plateau, to the rice fields in L’Artibonite, through the streets of Cite Soleil, and inside the concertina wired walls of an orphanage, these photographs are intended to share the strength, resiliency, determination and struggle that all Haitians face in a post-earthquake world.  

An elderly woman threads a needle after being fitted with new eyeglasses at a temporary clinic set up in an empty school in the small and remote village of Los Palis, located in the vast region of the Central Plateau. March, 2010.
   
The Artibonite, Haiti’s main rice-growing area, escaped major destruction from the January 12th earthquake, but received the full force of the cholera epidemic.
  
A young girl with symptoms of dehydration and malnutrition comes to a small clinic in the village of Los Palis, located in the rural countryside of Haiti's Central Plateau.
     
  
Outdoor waiting room for a health clinic in rural Haiti.
   
A young girl balances while walking across piles of rubble in Carrefour, the epicenter of the earthquake that left more than 25 million cubic yards of rubble – only five per cent of which has been cleared.
  
Ali Francois in the rural village of Los Palis, located about 70 km northeast of Port au Prince.
     
  
A woman leads me to her daughter who days before gave birth to a baby girl named Patricia inside their tent with no medical care. 2,000 people are living in this tent city, located on the front lawn of the Prime Minister’s former residence, while the nearly 1.5 million other homeless have sought refuge in empty lots, playgrounds, schools, soccer fields, parks, a car dealership, and Haiti's only golf course.
  
After being treated unsuccessfully for several months by a local voodoo healer and not getting better, a woman waits for a visit from a doctor in the village of Bouneau, located in the Artibonite Region.
  
A family in Bouneau, located in the Artibonite region of Haiti, suffered enormous loss in October of 2010 when 20 children in their village died of cholera.
     
  
A 2 year old girl is brought into the Los Palis health clinic by her grandmother for severe malnutrition. The girl's parents abandoned their daughter and the grandmother is too poor to provide for the child.
   
People are turned away outside the gates to a medical clinic in the remote village of Los Palmas, located in the rural countryside of Central Haiti. This area, with resources already spread so thin, was now faced with the new burden of the sudden influx of thousands of people fleeing Port au Prince, a huge strain on the already broken health care system.
   
Children get ready for bed at His Home orphanage in Port au Prince. There are an estimated 350,000 children living in Haitian orphanages, despite the fact that most of the time one or both parents are still alive. In this orphanage run by American missionaries, many of the kids have special needs that no one wanted or could care for. May, 2010.
     
  
Hose. A schoolboy watches a man drinks water from a hose on the streets of Carrefour, an area at the epicenter of the earthquake located on the outskirts of Port au Prince.
  
A young boy flies a kite made from a husk and paper plate in Cite Soleil.
   
Bouneau, a tiny village located in the Artibonite region of Haiti, has been hit extremely hard by cholera killing 20 children the first month of the outbreak.
     
  
A young woman sits on her front porch as the sun rises over the Central Plateau.
   
Health care workers are led to the home of a woman feared to be HIV positive in in the village of Bouneau, located in Haiti's Artibonite region.
   
A young boy enters his home in Los Palis, a village in the country's Central Plateau.
     
  
A woman with severe dehydration is a given fluids in a health clinic in the remote village of Los Palis, located in the Central Plateau region of Haiti.
   
A young boy waits just outside of an exam room in a health clinic in Haiti's Central Plateau.
   
A mother and her sons wait to be seen at a health clinic in Los Palis, Haiti.
     
  
A boy with a severe fungal infection on his scalp looks on as his mother and the doctor discuss his condition. Despite being treated for several years, the local health clinic does not consistently have access to the right medication to effectively manage the infection. Los Palis, 2010.
   
13. A woman who lost her husband to cholera during the first few months of the outbreak talks to a public health worker about the lack of sanitation in her village. Although national mortality rates from cholera are down to 2 percent, in many rural areas, one in ten people who contract the disease die. Artibonite Valley.
  
Three months after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti and killed upwards of 300,000 people in less than a minute, rubble is still on the streets. and bodies are still in the rubble.
     
  
Kimberly sits with her 3 day old daughter Patricia in their tent made of leaky nylon tarps that sits on the front yard at the Prime Minister's private home. It was raining the night Kimberlywent into labor, forcing her to deliver baby Patricia standing up to avoid the rising water.
  
8 month old Naciste is weighed on a scale at a clinic in the rural village of Los Palmas. Naciste weighs only 5 pounds.
  
A family in Los Palmas, Haiti where centuries of deforestation have left only 2 percent of it's original cover, making it almost impossible for farmers to grow enough food to feed their families.
     
  
Dr. Jean Cadet, a Haitian born physician now studying in Atlanta, Georgia, treats an older man in a temporary clinic located in the Central Plateau.
   
A woman sits with her young child in the village of Bouneau, located in Haiti's rural Artibonite region. She has been steadily losing weight for months but does not have the money for transportation to a clinic.
  
Bath time for the children living in the His Home orphanage in Port au Prince.
     
  
Water. A woman carries water near one of the massive camps providing temporary housing for over one million people made homeless by the Jan.12 earthquake. In the weeks following, widespread riots for water or were predicted. Neither has there been, to date, a major outbreak of water-borne disease.
  
When the earthquake damaged a large prison in Port-au-Prince and hundreds of violent criminals escaped, many made their way back to the slum known as Cite Soleil, near the port area in Port-au-Prince, according to police. Heavily armed U.N. soldiers from Brazil in armored vehicles continue to patrol Cite Soleil.
   
What remains of Haiti's Presidential Palace.