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Early one Sunday morning, around dawn, I drove to Macqueripe Bay for a photo shoot. It was five days before I gave birth, 31 years ago.
There, as daylight cast her yawning gaze upon the empty shore, I unclad myself and let Skye and Corinne wrap me in two beautiful bits of sheer blue fabric as I timorously waited for Sean Drakes to set up his equipment.
Copyright: Sean Drakes
There I was, my belly worshipping the now wide-eyed sun, framed by blue patterns—one draped above and the other wrapped below, posing for what he’d facetiously described as the first of his “knocked-up” series.
How I’d agreed to this is a testament to the persuasiveness and doggedness of Drakes, whom I’d met when I went to work at the Guardian newspaper in the early nineties. They remain the most revealing photographs I have ever had—both physically and emotionally.
Over the years, Sean and I had practically lost touch, so it was a surprise when he called recently to tell me about his book: THE LAST MAS: Minshall in the Carnival of Trinidad & Tobago, which was recently published.
He wanted to know if I would be interested in reviewing it. Naturally, I was.
When the book finally got to my hands, I flipped through it immediately, appreciating the photography I had expected to be its hallmark. I didn’t get around to reading it properly until a few days ago, and when I started, I didn’t stop until I had read every word—and it’s a big hardcover book of 183 pages.
The first thing that struck me was that the riveting image on the cover stood alone. There is no text, no title; nothing to indicate what it’s about (the information is on the spine), but that bold move was not surprising from Drakes.
(It is a still life of Michelangelo’s Pietà portrayed by Joanne Johnson and Cauri Jaye from Peter Minshall’s 1997 band, Tapestry.)
The book is about photographs, and Drakes chose to let them stand alone, unadorned and unexplained by captions, which appear at the back, along with other references.
A chapbook, is how he describes it, as “it surveys just one chapter of Minshall’s expansive career”. It comprises pictures of various portrayals and their production stages during the period described in the Foreword by Patricia Ganase as “the last mas”.
Ganase herself has been one of the abiding chroniclers of Peter Minshall’s journey for decades. Last year, along with Anu Lakhan, she edited a small but beautifully designed (Melanie Archer) book, MASMAN, which is a 2000 speech of Minshall’s at the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago.
Minshall has been famously eloquent in describing his work—his language equalling the drama of his creations, so every word resonates in tandem with his drawings in this painstakingly crafted publication.
In the Sean Drakes publication, there are 13 articles, written by various contributors, including Drakes and Minshall himself.
The title of the first piece, Mas in Barcelona: Toward a Performance Theory of the National Sublime, made me wince, fearing a heavy dose of academia from Gerard Aching. But I was happily mistaken.
By the third paragraph I was sucked into his project of understanding what makes the sublime. He quotes Minshall’s 1992 letter in the Sunday Guardian:
“A costume is no longer a costume. The costume becomes a sculpture. A human being wears the sculpture, dances the sculpture, performs it. A human being brings the sculpture to life.
“Equally, the sculpture brings to life a human being. Human energy is released on an astounding scale. The heart pounds and thrills. You see the music. You hear the dance.”
This is Minshall’s exposition.
The forays, the expositions are continued in Act I: The late Tony Hall on The Imagination of the Fancy Sailor, Milla Cozart Riggio on Dancing the Divine: Hallelujah – Song of the Earth – Tapestry and Teaching the Picoplat to Sing: Minshall’s Mourning Tribute to Trinidad in the Late Bands, Claire Tancons with Through the Peacock’s Screen, Philip Scher on The Fabric of a Nation, and Anton Mahoney on The Dying Swan.
Act II features Drakes and Minshall, together and apart.
Act III is mostly a photographer’s journal, tracking the circumstances of the shoots, and recording his aspirations. He doesn’t always know what he is seeking, but he trusts that he will recognise it when it comes.
He has made decisions about spontaneity and it means various challenges to keep his cameras concealed—a large face mask, perhaps?
The book opens with Pat Ganase’s Foreword and closes with her brief biography of Minshall. Altogether, it is a sumptuous collection, full of remarkable photos and essays that combine to present a genuine attempt to understand the facets of the man who has given so much to Caribbean civilisation.
Peter Minshall turned 83 on July 16 and for 50 years has been a towering figure on the global landscape. It is true that he has been celebrated and commemorated all over the world, but it warms the heart to see these two publications appearing within months of each other. It is especially endearing that they are truly worthy of their subject.
In a time when so many people find gainful employment by decrying everything, it is a poignant celebration of the lost grandeur of our Caribbean civilisation.
MASMAN is already at Paper-Based Bookshop, and The Last Mas should soon be there.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
