• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 10 / 04 / 2010

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Forty five years of Cuban history (1964-2009) are viewed from the perspective of Cuban photographer José A. Figueroa (Havana, 1946).
 
The book, recently presented in Cuba, covers forty five years (1964-2009) of the country’s history in images. It depicts the reality captured from the perspective of Cuban photographer José A. Figueroa (Havana, 1946).

Unlike other Cuban photographers, Figueroa has continuously captured with his camera every stage of the country’s development since the first years after the triumph of the Revolution to the present day reality.

He started out as a young photography apprentice, assistant and lab worker in Studios Korda, a famous commercial photo studio specializing in publicity and fashion.

There he became a student, assistant and personal friend of Alberto Korda, recognized as one of the big names of the epic photography of the Cuban Revolution.

From 1968 to 1976 he worked as a photo-reporter with Cuba International magazine, emulator of the US’s Life magazine.

In those years he traveled extensively throughout the country with writers, graphic designers and journalists.

In his travels he learned about the reality of the Cuban countryside, the social and economic changes introduced by the Revolution in the life of the most underprivileged sectors of the Cuban society. That experience gave rise to the series ‘El camino de la Sierra’ (The Path to the Mountains); ‘Señor, retráteme’ (Mister, Take my Picture); ‘Esa bandera’ (That Flag) and ‘Compatriotas’ (Comrades), among others, filled with symbolism—ethical and conceptual—and an honest sense of belonging to his country’s social project.

Figueroa’s personal experience as a Cuban, a Havana resident and an artist is forever treasured in this artistically refined selection, told, basically, in black and white.

Included here are reproductions that oppose the colorful and folkloric approaches that have characterized the vision of Cuba and, more specifically, the vision of Havana in the last two decades.

The book, published by Spain’s Turner both in English and Spanish, is structured in five chapters: ‘Sus piernas flojas sólo sirven para el rock. Los sesenta’ (His shaky legs are only good for rock. The Sixties); ‘Julio bien vale una fiesta. Los setenta’ (Julio is well worth a party. The Seventies); ‘Los locos están afuera. Los ochenta’ (The crazy ones are out there. The Eighties); ‘Und Jetzt? ¿Y ahora qué? Los noventa’ (Und Jetzt? Now, what? The Nineties) and ‘Figueroa en Figueroa’ (Figueroa in Figueroa). Cristina Vives—the photographer’s wife and an art critic herself—did all the research, publishing and writing for the book. An essay by art specialist Dannys Montes de Oca closes the critical section.

The photographs from the sixties—most of them unpublished—are the legacy of a lesser known view of that period in the history of Cuban photography, which has remained absent to date in the official iconography.

The snapshots vindicate a generation (his generation) and an aesthetics that struggled to survive mass-oriented social policies and censorship.

His photographic essay Exilio—Exile— (1967-1994) is perhaps one of its most significant series based on the thorough photographic documentation of the Cuban migration to the United States. Almost all of his family members and friends are shown, as well as the massive boatlift of over 35,000 Cubans in the summer of 1994.

On the photographs taken more recently, Cristina Vives says: “Figueroa’s work in the nineties and to date is like the life of his fellow countrymen: a permanent exercise of introspection, ever more synthetic in terms of resources—visual and material—, where you are searching for the whys of a historic time that abandoned utopia.”

According to the scholar, A Cuban Self-Portrait is a book that looks at Cuba and the world from a Cuban perspective, an honest, ethical, committed but also critical autobiography.

By: Yanelis Abreu

Source: www.cubanow.net/pages/articulo.php?sec=40&t=2&item=8783