Cuba - 50 años de soledad
Cuba…La Habana… the jewel of the Caribbean azure waters and white sand, colonial buildings and old American cars, rum and tobacco, music and colors, communism and poverty. Can there be anywhere else in the world that is such an assault on the senses? Initially you're overwhelmed. But gradually you realize it's like a wave. Resist, and you'll be knocked over. Dive into it, and you'll swim out the other side. Those who know the country of old just go about their business. But nothing can prepare the uninitiated for this riot of noise and color, for the heat, the motion, the perpetual teeming crowds….
I always had a passion for photography but I also had a thirst for traveling, always wanting to go to new places, I wanted to see the world through my own eyes as well as through the viewfinder. I wanted to visit Cuba because I thought it’s a place which has a cultural depth, a mix of religions, the old and the new, the rich and the poor, and of course the revolution that was meant to bring people the long wanted equality and well-being.
I have to say that looking at other photographers work had a major impact on my viewfinder and they have influenced my desires, people like Steve McCurry, James Natchwey, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Eve Arnold, Walker Evans etc and writers as well such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ernest Hemmingway. Just looking at their images and reading their books, taught me a lot of working with composition and seeing light in a different way all being part of my learning process. For me the most important element of a photograph, the thing that I really look for is the picture that shows the reality, the truth about human nature, what life is like in the town is or village that I travel through. I see myself as a story teller about a place.
La Habana is my main objective, I was enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life, this kaleidoscopic carnival spilled throughout the streets of dirty old Habana Vieja. Almost all the places become the outdoor living rooms, the outdoor gardens of Cuba. People tend to live their lives more on the streets than in their homes thus a certain feeling of milonga comes along and wraps you into a Cuban salsa movement easily palatable and the real life cabaret of people never stops to astound me.
I always had a passion for photography but I also had a thirst for traveling, always wanting to go to new places, I wanted to see the world through my own eyes as well as through the viewfinder. I wanted to visit Cuba because I thought it’s a place which has a cultural depth, a mix of religions, the old and the new, the rich and the poor, and of course the revolution that was meant to bring people the long wanted equality and well-being.
I have to say that looking at other photographers work had a major impact on my viewfinder and they have influenced my desires, people like Steve McCurry, James Natchwey, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Eve Arnold, Walker Evans etc and writers as well such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Ernest Hemmingway. Just looking at their images and reading their books, taught me a lot of working with composition and seeing light in a different way all being part of my learning process. For me the most important element of a photograph, the thing that I really look for is the picture that shows the reality, the truth about human nature, what life is like in the town is or village that I travel through. I see myself as a story teller about a place.
La Habana is my main objective, I was enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life, this kaleidoscopic carnival spilled throughout the streets of dirty old Habana Vieja. Almost all the places become the outdoor living rooms, the outdoor gardens of Cuba. People tend to live their lives more on the streets than in their homes thus a certain feeling of milonga comes along and wraps you into a Cuban salsa movement easily palatable and the real life cabaret of people never stops to astound me.
