Cuba Iluminada: Always in progress
“From Punta de Maisí to Cabo de San Antonio, Cuba’s landscapes, its people, and their spirit cast a spell on me and without realizing when or how, this island influenced one of my photographic passions—the human portrait.”
The “Cuba Iluminada” project represents an important milestone in my life, an unexpected turn from the usual professional work I had been doing and one that changed the course of my life in a very personal way. Photography brought me to Cuba, not the project itself, and I casually set foot on this island one November when I was supposed to be in pristine Argentine Patagonia. An unexpected change in plans found me inaugurating an exhibition of my aerial photographs in Old Havana and it was a matter of days before I felt that Cuba was about to become an irreplaceable part of my life.
Little did I know of what charms Cuba had in store for me and how I would fall for them without much resistance. After Havana, I was captivated by the wild enormity of the Zapata swamps, followed by the wicked beauty of the Oriente mountains. From Punta de Maisí to Cabo de San Antonio, Cuba’s landscapes, its people, and their spirit cast a spell on me and without realizing when or how, this island influenced one of my photographic passions—the human portrait.
© Héctor Garrido. Enrique Pineda Barnet, Film Director and Scriptwriter at home in Havana (also featured in cover photo)
© Héctor Garrido. Félix Savón, Olympic Boxer in Havana.
Encouraged by a Spanish publisher, I started to make portraits of Cuban artists in order to make a book and eventually a traveling exhibition. Through the course of this endeavor, on pure happenstance, I also found myself at the door of what would later become my home. On one occasion, when that door opened, I was greeted by the sincere and kind smile of the person with whom I would share my life ever since. In only a split second, like it happens in a camera, I knew that for once, I had not captured the character’s soul—rather, it had stolen mine and it was final.
© Héctor Garrido. Laura de la Uz, actress and theater director at home in Havana.
It was around this time that my project began to take shape and have a name. I consulted with the people I had already photographed, looking for a common theme to tie them all within a single body of work. Each one proposed several imaginative names, some ingenious, others sympathetic, and a few less serious ones.. Yet, intriguingly, most agreed that the project name should not be missing two words: Cuba and light. With that as a principle in place, it only took a bit of intellectual impetus and “Cuba Illuminated” was born.
This project was a great challenge for me. Portraiture had always been a part of my photographic repertoire that enriched other projects but had never formed the primary vocabulary of my work, certainly not in the form of a full-fledged project. All of a sudden, I was going to portray some of the greatest Cuban artists, from photography, music, literature, and cinema amongst others. While the initial idea was to limit the project to a hundred photos, it was evident that was too small a number. We decided to eliminate the numeric constraint and continue the project indefinitely, turning it into a “work in progress.”
© Héctor Garrido. Viengsay Valdés, Prima Ballerina and Artistic Director of the Cuban National Ballet at La Guarida Havana
© Héctor Garrido. Leonardo Padura, Writer and Journalist at home in Havana.
The first fruits of that effort were a book and traveling exhibition that even today continues to tour some of the most diverse places. The exhibition continues to evolve constantly as I add and remove photographs and hence, the exhibition shown in Havana is not exactly the same as that in Madrid or Bilbao — new faces come in and others are absent, the ones that are no longer with us. It has now turned into an open project and following the exhibition at Casa America in Madrid, I have deliberately changed the format to eliminate anything that suggests completion: heavy frames, matting, and glass. Therefore, as if to vindicate the unfinished character of the exposition, I now leave the photos only on paper, nailed on walls with pins, much like prints are hung in a lab when looking at them for the first time, after they had been developed.
© Héctor Garrido.
Top Left: Carilda Oliver, writer in Matanzas
Top Right: Luisa María Serrano (Lichy), plastic artist in Sancti Spiritus
Bottom Left: Chucho Valdes, Composer and Pianist at home in Benalmadena, Spain
Bottom Right: Liborio Noval, photographer at home in Havana
The book containing large portions of the work was published in 2016 by my lifelong editor under the seal of Editorial Rueda, with whom I have also released the book “Fractals, Intimate Anatomy of the Marsh.” Perhaps someday in the future, we will consider re-issuing it with a whole set of new faces that I have been incorporating and even fresh images of artists previously captured.
That is “Cuba Iluminada.” It is the face of culture and art in Cuba from my personal perspective, how I see, capture, and show it.
© Héctor Garrido. Lizt Alfonso, Director of Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba at her studio in Havana.
Cuba Iluminada, published by Editorial Rueda S.L. in 2016 includes over hundred photos from Garrido that capture numerous personalities, moments, and milestones of Cuban culture in a way never recorded before. A copy of the book can be ordered here.
