RRA

Douglas Orane’s Archive of Post-colonial Jamaica


Project Researcher: RRA
Collaborator: Kitchen Flex Podcast, -1 Digital Lab at Het Nieuwe Instituut 

Through the archive of Jamaican photographer and carpenter Douglas Orane, a collaborative investigation between RRA and Kitchen Flex was forged to ask the questions: “What is Caribbean Architecture and even more so, what could it be? How does one go about a reclamation process of history that is grounded in the built environment and that sees itself beyond the colonizer?” The archive of Douglas Orane documented a newly independent Jamaica in the midst of finding their identity and definition of freedom from the British in the 1960’s. This presented an intimate look at what expressions of freedom felt like.

Through the personal archive as a starting point, images that demonstrated intimacy within family structures and communities, intimacy with the environment, details of life in certain neighbourhoods or amongst certain structures, children playing in nature and embodying an “island-people in an island life-style” began an ongoing project of looking at Tropical Architectural Design as it connects to the black societies exploring liberation, independence and home.


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