The Afflicted Yard – was an independent ten year project that was established in 1999 by photographer Peter Dean Rickards. From its inception, the site was dedicated to a street level view of Jamaican culture via creative writing, photojournalism, art photography, videography and public exhibitions.

THE AFFLICTED YARD AS IT FIRST APPEARED: OCT 27, 1999

What began as a outlet for Rickards' social commentary and creative writing during his Pol.Sci/History studies at the University of the West Indies would eventually became an obsession, and by its second year, The Afflicted Yard had developed a cult following in Kingston at a time when the Internet was still a relatively new phenomenon in Jamaica.

In the early days, the content of the site was primarily a collection of articles that ranged from cartoons and memoirs to stories about traveling dead dogs, sex-crazed drunken tourists and the documentation of a wide variety of 'incidents' that were taking place in Jamaica at the time.

The site also became known for its notoriously caustic message board - The Informer Corner - a bastion of free speech until 2004 when Rickards' realised monitoring message boards was a pain. Shortly after he banned the use of vowels and eventually banned everyone.

THE AFFLICTED YARD : CIRCA 2000

In 2002 Rickards realized the communicative power of the camera began to flood the The Afflicted Yard with a selection of stark, vivid and often controversial images of modern life in Jamaica.

It was these images that landed Rickards’ byline on the pages of publications such as I-D, The Fader, Arena, The Independent (UK) , and in 2005, his own magazine – FIRST which Vanity Fair called : ‘…an inspired oddity that flouts conventional magazine wisdom while keeping production values high.’

By 2007, after several years of bringing an unedited view of the world and Jamaican culture to Afflicted Yard tenants, the site's reputation had taken on a life of its own.

In August 2010, Rickards' primary website was launched and The Afflicted Yard was officially put on indefinite vacation (though it has a way of coming back when it feels like).

It has been left online in its entirety for archival purposes.

Watch it or change the channel.