Cuban Photography Exposed - Cuban art popularity gaining in the United States

Journeying to Cuba, photographers, curators and art dealers are bringing revolutionary images back to America's heartland

A new face of Cuba is capturing America's heart. We see it on television: Wim Wenders' documentary film, Buena Vista Social Club, continues to air on public television. We hear it on the radio: the Ry Cooder-produced music album of the same title has attained worldwide success, and the sound of Cuban-style jazz is everywhere. We even toast it: the mojito, Cuba's famous mint-infused cocktail, has become the hot drink throughout the nation.

Indeed, after four decades of socialism, U.S. trade embargos and resulting isolation from this country, Cuba is once again at the forefront of U.S. popular culture. The island nation's architecture, dating from its 16th-and 17th-century Spanish colonial heritage, and its pristine white-and-black sand beaches now draw millions of tourists each year--a growing number of them American.

"Cuba is definitely hot" said Jack Kenny, a photographer from Plymouth, Mich., who has traveled to Cuba some 25 times since 1996, when Fidel Castro decided to rebuild his nation's finances on tourist dollars. "There's a growing awareness of Cuba. It started with the Pope [visiting Cuba in 1998], then CNN opened an office. People are realizing it's an interesting place, a Caribbean island with 4,000 miles of beaches, and it's close to the United States."

This burgeoning interest in Cuba has also generated a growing interest in the island's art--particularly its post-Revolutionary photographic works--from both art dealers and collectors. This interest got a jump-start in the 1990s when art dealers successfully sued the U.S. Treasury Department "for the right to import art" from Cuba--an action allowing art dealers to legally become licensed and bring Cuban art into the U.S. Last November, almost 4,000 American tourists attended the 7th Havana Bienal, among 15,000 international visitors, according to the art exposition's director, Nelson Herrera Ysla. And exhibits of Cuban photography--from iconic portraits of revolutionary leaders like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to street scenes, portrayals of everyday Cuban citizens and even cutting-edge conceptual photographs with a Cuban twist--have been on view throughout the U.S.

And according to art dealer Milly Moorhead, "The interest here isn't about politics--it's about art."

A Growing Audience

This past spring, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) mounted "Shifting Tides: Cuban Photography after the Revolution," an exhibit from several discrete artistic "generations" of Cuban photographers. Currently on view at the Grey Art Gallery in New York (through Oct. 27) and slated to open in November at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, "Shifting Tides" features images that not only trace the development of this fine art form in Cuba since 1959, but also images that track the political and social changes in Cuba during the same period.

The museum exhibit in L.A. prompted several Southern California commercial galleries to showcase related works--hence giving more exposure to contemporary Cuban photography. Couturier Gallery exhibited "Three Cuban Photographers: Jose Figueroa, Jose Manuel Fors and Carlos Gariacoa." Gallery owner Darrel Couturier has visited Cuba numerous times in recent years (he has even organized trips for groups of art dealers and collectors) and has organized many exhibits of Cuban photography and painting. One such exhibit, featuring 80 works by Figueroa and Alberto Diaz Gutierrez (Korda), has traveled to Roy Boyd Gallery in Chicago, Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore and Govinda Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Also in conjunction with the LACMA show, Iturralde Gallery presented the work of two artists included in "Shifting Tides." The gallery, which specializes in Latin American art and has organized several Cuban art exhibits in the past decade, presented photographs by Marta Maria Perez Bravo and a video by Juan Carlos, Alom, one of Cuba's most important contemporary photographers.

"It had a very strong response," noted gallery co-owner Teresa Iturralde. "Still, it is a career of patience to open a new market, in this case for works from Cuba. The Cuban works are very seductive, with a different energy and sensibility. This is not a political platform--it's about the art and nothing else."

Indeed, this seems to be the feeling shared by a number of dealers and collectors on the nature of contemporary Cuban photography. Art dealer Milly Moorhead, owner of Southside Gallery in Oxford, Miss., had "a life-changing experience" when she first visited Cuba in January 1996 (she has since taken 14 more trips).

"I just found I had a rapport with these Cuban photographers," she said. "I decided I had to let the people here in Oxford see the remarkable photography from Cuba. It isn't about politics, it's about art. Look at the famous photograph of Che. This would be a good picture--a well-composed photograph and good portrait--even if it were not a portrait of Che Guevara."

Even in Florida, home to so many Castro-hating Cuban exiles, there's a growing interest in Cuban photography. One of the largest U.S. collections of Cuban photography resides at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach.

"We've started collecting and showing post-Revolutionary photography from Cuba, as well as the work of Cuban-American photographers" said Museum Director Alison Nordstrom. She said contemporary Cuban work is on par with the work of other U.S. and European fine art photographers.

"It's important to remember," said Nordstrom, "that although we think of Cuban photographers as isolated, they have only been isolated from us, not the rest of the world."

"For a long time, galleries in Florida were afraid to exhibit works made in Cuba, for fear of protests" added Gainesville photographer Randy Batista. "Now the Cuban art scene in Florida is a hot item. And I think it's only going to get better as relations `normalize' between our two countries."

Cuban Photographers on the Rise

So, who, in addition to the famed Korda, are the Cuban photographers to look for?

"There's not a lot of Cuban artists who are famous yet," observed Tim Wride, LACMA's associate curator of photography and the organizer of "Shifting Tides." "Many of these artists don't even have a dealer."

In fact, sometimes it is hard enough for these photographers to obtain the supplies they need in order to practice their craft. "Every time I visited Cuba, I was taking Korda paper and supplies," said Moorhead, who was a friend of the famed photographer. "Isn't it odd? He was the most famous photographer in all the Caribbean, and he needed me to bring him photographic paper, D-76 and Decktol [developing agents]."

While the "Shifting Tides" exhibit is not an encyclopedic survey of Cuban photography, it is a good place to start, introducing a fine art photography audience to several distinct categories of Cuban artistic expression. During and immediately after the Revolution, photographers like Osvaldo Salas, Raul Corrales and Korda helped create a cult of personality around Castro and Che, recording their early military and political struggles and then their meetings and events. These portraits have become emblematic of Cuba's communist transformation.

Soon, though, Cuban photographers began to celebrate the common man--workers in the cane fields and in industrial settings, citizens walking through the streets, washing clothes, dancing--living their lives. Jose A. Figueroa, Ivan Canas, Enrique de la Uz and Maria Eugenia Haya (Marucha) combined photojournalism and historical documentary with propaganda, all at once. According to Wride, these "photographers of the first generation began to picture the common man as the focus as well as the locus of the Revolution ... [and] the process of making photographs was as crucial to the success of the new social order as were the labors of those in the cane fields, the constructions of steelworkers, or the aspiration of teachers in [Castro's] Literacy Project"

But just as contemporary American and European fine art photographers have often turned their lenses away from straightforward documentation, so too have emerging Cuban photographers, especially those who grew up in Cuba after the Revolution.

"The art [of Cuban photographers] eventually morphed from a celebration of the new social order in the guise of hero worship to a street ethic photo-reportage into a really internationalized art form and a new way of using photography" observed Wride. Cuban artists like Rogelio Lopez Marin (Gory), Juan Carlos Alom, Marta Maria Perez Bravo and Jose Manuel Fors are not just shooting photographs, they are making images. These artists frequently create manipulated tableaus, incorporating personal and universal symbols in their work. And like many contemporary international artists, these photographers have begun to question the "truth" of photography.

Wride also noted the work of younger artists like Carlos Gariacoa and Pedro Abascal who have "little or no memory of a Cuba before Fidel Castro" These are artists whose works do not express the need to validate the Revolution or Cuba's socioeconomic structure, according to Wride. Instead, their artistic "investigations have become intensely individualized and introspective. Their focus has narrowed to the most personal of meditations."

According to several art industry professionals, the "Shifting Tides" exhibit overlooked several important Cuban photographers. Corrales' images were not included in the show; nor were Mayito's (Mario Garcia Joya), one of the first Cuban photographers to elevate the common man to portrait status. Sandra Ceballos, Rene Pena, Eduardo Munoz, Roberto Salas and Liborio Noval were also omitted.

Expatriates and Immigrants

While photographers based in Cuba are producing the biggest buzz these days, photographers who live outside of Cuba have also piqued American collectors' and art dealers' interests. An increasing number of Cuban emigre artists have journeyed to their homeland and documented their experiences. For example, Tony Mendoza, who teaches photography at Ohio State University in Columbus, recently published Cuba--Going Back, a photographic journal.

Gainesville photographer and gallery owner Batista, whose father is Cuban, was born in the United States but lived in Cuba from age 4 to 13, leaving in 1961, two years after Castro's ascendancy to power. Currently, an exhibit of Batista's works entitled, "Randy Batista: American Eyes, Cuban Heart," is on display at the Gulf Coast Museum in Largo, Fla., until Nov. 11. The photographs were shot during two bittersweet journeys to his homeland in the late 1990s, chronicling everyday people and lives in Havana and the island's rural farmlands.

"My work in Cuba has been very personal," said Batista. "I was trying to capture my return to a place I'd known intimately as a child" The photographer visited his father's homestead and shot pictures of his family--"all 85 first cousins." Batista recounted, "I documented my family, their home life, and what they were enduring. And then in Havana, I rode around on bicycles for 10 days"--with a deaf-mute gardener as his guide. "We were just roaming the streets. I saw the poverty, but it is a poverty of material, not spirit. These people still have a sense of pride and joy and family. What little they have, they will share with you."

And then there are American photographers like Kenny, who now sells his own photographs documenting day-to-day life in Cuba, as well as works by Roberto Salas and Korda, who died earlier this year. When Kenny presented a show of Cuban art and photographs (including 300 of his own images) in Ann Arbor, Mich., last April at the 4th Avenue Gallery, he sold about $4,000 worth of work.

Another American photographer who has traveled extensively in Cuba, Laurence Salzmann, is preparing a Cuban Festival in October in Philadelphia. During the same period, his work will be exhibited at Moorhead's Southside Gallery.

A Changing Marketplace

During the past several years, Nordstrom has noted a significant change in the market for Cuban photography--namely, a rise in prices.

"The artists are still very eager to sell their work, but Cuban artists are also beginning to price their work realistically for the world market" she said. "There was a time when you could literally show up in Cuba with a box of Agva paper and swap it for prints. Those days are gone."

Indeed, with his death, Korda's photographs have doubled in asking price, to about $1,500. Other photographers' works are selling in the $700 to $850 range.

Some keep their prices relatively modest for charity purposes. On average, Batista sells his images for $500. "I want to price them affordably, in part to use the sales as fundraising, so I could bring medicine and materials back to Cuba with me" he said. "It was trying to see these people with no food. Everything is in short supply."

Wherever Cuban photos are exhibited, media attention follows. Batista's photographs have been the subject of a number of articles. In Toronto, when the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House presented a Cuban photography show, recalled director Judith Schwartz, "we got huge press. We had a steady stream of people coming into the show." Similarly, The Washington Post did a big piece when Govinda Gallery introduced the Korda-Figueroa show earlier this year. "The response was overwhelmingly positive" reported gallery co-director Kristina Bilonick. "The article helped draw in huge foot traffic. We were also selling Korda's books, and we sold out within days."

The public's fascination with Cuba stems perhaps from the islands' spirit--its faith in the triumph of humanity--which is expressed in its photographs.

Moorhead, who was friends with Korda, remembers one day when they were looking at one of his famous images--a shot of Che and Castro playing golf. "Korda said to me, `You see, Milly, there's the human side.' He took such pleasure in remembering that day" she said.

RELATED ARTICLE: 1994 Fotofest: A Seminal Event for Cuban Photography

For Alison Nordstrom and many other U.S. art dealers and curators now concentrating on Cuban photography, the seminal event for the rise of Cuban photography in the U.S. was Houston's 1994 Fotofest, which presented "The New Generation: Contemporary Photography from Cuba."

"For many of us in the field, it was the first time we were exposed to a large quantity of Cuban work," recalled Nordstrom. "I was blown away. Since then, we have gotten up to our necks in Cuban photography."

The seeds for the Fotofest event were planted in Mexico in 1993 when Fotofest's artistic director, Wendy Watriss, met with a group of Cuban artists.

"We talked about looking at the generation after the Revolution," recalled Watriss. "This younger breed of artists wasn't spreading the ideological word. They had lived through the points of failure [of Castro's regime] and there was a sense of disillusionment. But I realized that, just as there had been an extraordinary flowering of street art in Cuba during the 1980s, photography was flowering as well."

The resulting show of contemporary Cuban photography at Fotofest was widely reviewed and covered in the media--and it was picketed by anti-Castro activists, which generated even more publicity. Watriss arranged for most of the featured Cuban artists to have visas for the event,"so then we insisted they go to New York and visit dealers, collectors, galleries and curators. As a result, these people [art professionals] saw this new generation of photographers with quite sophisticated work."

Later that year, Fotofest brought back half of the artists for a second show. "We really did launch many of these artists' international careers," Watriss explained.

For example, the Martha Schneider Gallery in Chicago picked up a handful of Cuban photographers, including Perez Bravo. Other galleries to do so include Photographs Do Not Bend in Dallas and Caracola of Los Angeles.

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