King Rulebreaker.

If you’re affixing a title to Jason C. Audain’s photographic mantle, start there.

Born in 1983, Port of Spain, Audain gravitated towards visual art in his school days, but took no photographs. His formal training? A decade-long apprenticeship to taking pictures, carried out with an autodidact’s focus, rigour and grit. To work professionally with Audain is to enter a relationship characterised by open communication, frequent consultation, and a transparency of expectations, as candid as it is reliable. This is one King Rulebreaker who knows the rules inside out, back to front, and can bend them because of the diligence of his self-study.

What animates his work is the desire to tell a tale as true as it can be visually spun. All is consecrated to the story, to the art and practice of revealing it through pictures that are meticulously made, not carelessly snapped. Audain’s roster of clients, which has included The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago, Departures.com, among others, benefits from this sharp focus. 

Anyone with their pulse on Carnival must know his images. Mas photography brought with it all the kinetic abandon Audain could have hoped for as an emerging talent. He threw himself into the frenetic pulse of the greatest show on earth, making subject, object and audience joyously complicit in a riot of celebration. An equal level of dedication went into the production of images of stilt-balanced Moko Jumbies, of leering, pitchfork-wielding Blue Devils. In this respect, says Audain, no aspect of Carnival is lesser or better: all of it presents as an energy, a ritual he’s desirous of capturing. Prestigious digital and print platforms Essence Magazine, Caribbean Beat and National Geographic have spotlighted these shots, as indelible in their impressions as a tattoo rippling beneath the skin.

It would be impossible to speak of Jason C. Audain’s methodology without inviting a certain chaos. This photographer knows that the rhythms of performance and spectacle obey their own creative forces – and so too must he, as their chronicler. In his own words, “I risk everything to get the shots”. This has meant literally losing his eyebrows and eyelashes to the singe of a flambeau, fractionally evading the lash of a Jab Jab’s whip, being stung by a scorpion while on assignment in the hills of St. Kitts. If it sounds more like extreme sportsmanship than an artistic discipline, just think of Audain as a guerrilla photographer, wielding his camera like a weapon on the battlefield where wars are waged and won on the strength of a single shot. 

“My dream shot is the shot I never thought about, the shot I am yet to see, the one to blow my own mind”, says Audain of his future. He’s already hunting the next best image, knowing it exists in the spirit world, in the rhythms of nature, and in his mind’s eye. The true endeavour lies in calling it forth. You’ll find Jason C. Audain, wearing that rulebreaker’s crown, ready and waiting.

Written by Shivanee N. Ramlochan