ABOUT

In Let the Sun Beheaded Be, Gregory Halpern focuses on the Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe, an overseas region of France with a complicated and violent colonial past. The work resonates with Halpern’s characteristic attention to the ways the details of a landscape and the people who inhabit it often reveal the undercurrents of local histories and experiences. Let the Sun Beheaded Be offers a visually striking depiction of place—as it has been worked on by the forces of nature, people, and events—as well as a thoughtful engagement with the complexities of photographing in foreign lands as an interloper. A text by curator and editor Clément Chéroux grapples with Guadeloupe’s colonial past concerning the French Revolution, Surrealism, and the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, whose writing inspired the title of the book and much of the imagery itself.