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Cuba Without Clichés

Cuba followed shortly after Goa. I was extremely curious to see the reality that had been covered over by recent political events. There was propaganda from both sides, meaning from the US and Cuba, and not forgetting the Cubans resident in the United States, who were and are very vocal and active. Cuba was being sold to the outside world as a beach resort - a beach resort, it must be said, that was almost completely unrelated and almost unattached to the mainland and its living conditions. The mainland, on the other hand, was nothing more than the Buena Vista Social Club, daiquiris, Hemingway, cigars, old Chevrolets, Che, sugar cane and rum, Martí and Castro himself. There are more than 30 35x35 cm. prints in the collection.

To photograph the people and the misery they lived would be another kind of cliché, one that I always avoided, as being distasteful and irreverent. What I found behind ready made concepts was as varied and it was almost ignored. First there was the remains of Spanish colonialism in the cities and in the country. Some of the remains had been abandoned, but others, however, were inhabited and being used, as if there had not been any intervening time - life went on as best as it could - or time stood still. My images were ‘pictures without words’, they also did not take a social or political stand they were almost static in nature- natures mortes - not particularly animated by human movement, which also told a silent story.