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Ilya Genin remembers that when he was a third-grader in the Soviet Union in 1959, he and his classmates learned about the success of the Cuban revolution and sang about “the island of crimson sunsets.”

When he traveled to Havana for the first time 51 years later, however, his interest focused on the island’s people rather than on the still-beautiful sunsets.

Sixty-one of the photographs he took on that trip and the many others he has made to Cuba since then are currently on display at the Art Way Gallery in Plainsboro.

“So why do I feel compelled to photograph people rather than spectacular sunsets or the picturesque decay of the beautiful art-deco buildings?” he asks in his essay, “The Human Kind.”

I believe anyone who spends time with the people in these images will find the answer to Genin’s question.

What he says he found is the sense of community born in the sharing of all the ups and downs of life, their aspirations and feelings, their willingness to help each other. He captured that in the photographs that are on display.

There’s an old woman leaning on the windowsill of an old stone building, and a bearded man looking out from behind a scrolled iron gate. Both wear expressions of humble acceptance of where life has led them.

A young girl smiles a welcome over a picket fence, and a man in a tweed jacket sits on a step writing music, while in a nearby photograph, another man is seated on a sea wall blowing his horn.

A seemingly well-fed woman is seen in a doorway with her regally dressed religious statuettes and a bunch of flowers waiting for purchasers, while, in another photograph, an emaciated old woman sits on a curb offering her small basket of wares with the head of one small statue peeking out.

There are photos of workmen resting, people taking a smoke break, two young women with big smiles and ample breasts almost overflowing their tank tops happily offering ears of corn for sale.

There’s a young woman, her abdomen swollen, sleeping with her head resting on one arm spread across a tabletop surrounded by baby bottles and one baby shoe.
Three barefoot youths lean conspiratorially close to each other against a wall, a beautiful woman poses on a balcony above a city street, and a nicely dressed elderly woman is seen walking in what appears to be a middle-class neighborhood.

These are the people Genin met as he wandered the streets of Havana, the people who gave him a sense of the place, its ambience and flavor.

Genin’s body of work not only captures the faces and the spirit of the Cuban people he came in contact with there, it also delves into what he refers to as “the ‘syncretic’ religion’s fusion of Roman Catholic symbols and rituals with Yoruba, an indigenous West African religion brought by slaves.”

A collection of his composite photographs expressing Genin’s powerful impressions of Cuban culture can be found in the balcony gallery.

“Regarding the process,” he says, “I take the fragments of different photos I have shot in Cuba and then combine them in the way you might put together a collage. …I do not do it just for the ease of the expression, I enjoy looking for those elements and for the ideas that make the pieces of the puzzle come together and make a new statement, sound a new note or riff on the feeling I may not be even able to express in words.”

An example of this is an image of musicians performing, superimposed over a city of decaying buildings and the words “VIVA FIDEL.”

Another is an image of a man who was first seen in the portrait section of the exhibit. He is seated now at the foot of steps that descend from the top of the image, surrounded by newspapers with blaring headlines floating around him as the face of Jesus looks on.

A nearby collage shows the face of Jesus wearing a crown of thorns over an image of a ruined city. Another offers a voyeur’s look at couples intensely engaged with each other in a sultry dance.

“I am finding that creating a collage where each component sounds a note, evokes a feeling or represents a thought is helpful in my story-telling,” Genin says.

“The image-story thus produced frequently goes straight to the heart of the brain or, more likely to the brain of the heart, where non-verbal communication is the order of the day. I believe photography is about telling stories without the word being spoken.”

Genin, who grew up in the Soviet Union, practices cardiology in Hamilton.

His portfolio of images taken during recent trips to Havana is included in “Black and White,” Fine Photography magazine’s October 2012 issue winning the award in the Best Portfolio Contest.

The Sept. 7 reception, free and open to the public, will feature authentic, home-cooked Cuban food, recordings of Cuban music and a discussion of the modern political history of Cuba featuring noted author and scholar Dan Figueredo.

“Yo Soy Cuba!”
When: 9 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays, variable Saturdays, 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 7; Reception 5:30-8:30 p.m. today
Where: Art Way Gallery, Princeton Alliance Church, Schalks Crossing Road at Wyndhurst Drive, Plainsboro
Contact: (609) 799-9000, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 9 a.m.-noon Fridays, or artwaygallery.org

Source: NJ.com


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