The fisherfolk of Livingston // Guatemala, February 2025

I must tell you, this first blog post about the trip to Guatemala I’m just coming home to (I got home one week ago, “just” is still appropriate) documents the last place I went to and one of the last thing I witnessed: Livingston and its fishing community.

This roll of film, I developed right away, I’ve had it sitting in my computer for a few days, and I’ve been enamoured with the images from the moment I took the roll out of the developing tank.

And yet, I waited to share them. It’s not that I’ve been too busy, I think, rather, that I was feeling possessive: holding onto them, keeping them to myself because they felt special. You know, once I publish them, they kind of stop being mine – I know it’s not entirely true, but my feeling are what they are, and they have their own truth. Anyways, one week is not that long, and now feels like the right time to do it.

While it’s tempting to say and write so, I didn’t just stumble on these scenes. When I arrived in Livingston, I was looking for manifestations of the local culture. If you look into Livingston, you’ll find many articles that mention it as a hotspot of Garifuna – Latino Afro-Carribean – culture, and I was intent on finding visual expressions of that heritage. I must admit, I wasn’t entirely successful in that particular visual quest, I ate Garifuna food (and it was lovely), I went to a live performance of drums on my first night (and it was fun, but it was clearly meant for tourists, the only locals there were the band, so it lacked the kind of authenticity I strive for), and then I regret to write that I skipped a religious procession I heard happen behind me as I was walking back to my hostel on that same first evening (and that, retrospectively, was stupid of me, but in that moment, I was feeling overwhelmed, as it sometimes happen, and I needed a moment of quiet, so I might not have been able to honour the celebration the way it deserved to be).

But while I wasn’t able to explore the Garifuna Heritage in pictures, I I found something precious. Something simpler, and that deeply resonates with me (see for example the photographs I made of Ilhéus, Brazil, or some portraits of folks I took on Lake Monona a few summers ago) : fishermen and women at work.

I found my first work station by following a cat. Livingston is full of cats, like fishing communities often are, and it’s when I noticed one snooping around a very humble wooden hut that I got the feeling this one might be a door worth pushing. I was walking with a fellow Italian I’d met several times during my travel (Manuele from Ragusa, in Sicily), looking for a place to eat, and we walked in asking if it was OK to come in and see what they were doing. I felt welcome in that quiet way that working people, mostly ignored and unseen by our hungry societies, have of letting you in, witnessing their space. In the sake of telling the whole story, I must mention that Manuele hastened us out of there, and he later told me there had been an altercation and one of the men drew a machete, I did not see that, it must have happened close to the door when I was on the dock, and while hearing of it left an impression on me, at no point did I feel unsafe or threatened. Of course I had my camera with me, but the light was dimming too quickly, and I wasn’t able to take any photographs, so I confirmed with the men I could return the next day, and we left.

These images are from the following day. I had however switched my roll of film because even in broad daylight, I was worried the work stations would be too dark to photograph with an ISO of 100, and that the light might be somewhat tricky, with the bright background of the fishing docks behind, so I went for the forgiving qualities of Tri-X.

The fish was abundant, to say the least, and apparently it’s because they were working more than usual in preparation for the Semana Santa. I didn’t find the cat that tipped me off the night before, but I was particularly amused by how the Pelicans and the White Herons surrendered their own ability to fish and instead flocked to the fishing docks, waiting for the people to throw them the guts of the fish they were cleaning.

For the nerds (I’m one of them, no judgement) who like to know these things. As I mentioned in passing in the article, I photographed these with my beautiful (so beautiful it’s almost jewelry) Kodak Retina IIIc, on hand-spooled Kodak Tri-X 400.

I love hand-spooled Tri-X, I think it has more grain than the stuff spooled by Kodak in the proper Kodak canister (maybe because the big spools are supposed to be meant for motion pictures), and that grain has a glimmer that’s to die for. However, a word of caution on hand-spooling: there’s very few downsides to doing it yourself, but be prepared for some slight mishaps. For example, my hand-rolling isn’t without flaws, and you must know that while sometimes I get the desired amount of film in the canister, I also have had my share of blunders, with rolls that clearly didn’t get any for reasons yet unknown to me. Also, in the spirit of sharing hard-learned wisdom, when shooting a hand-spooled of film, you need to be careful when you reach the end of the roll, I the tape can let go, and then you need to find a way to get the film out of the camera without being able to respool it in the canister (always pack a dark bag, it’s easier than having to make yourself a darkroom out of random spaces).

The fisherfolk of Livingston // Guatemala, February 2025

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