After I got back from this trip, many friends asked me if I “liked” it. Me, I have a long history of being unable to answer simple questions, but this one is one of the hardest so far.
For me, Havana was both a semi-traumatic and a great experience, the mix I found on Havana streets has no comparison to anything I’ve experienced anywhere else in the world.
I guess it’s the stack of my childhood memories, growing up in socialist Romania, that was all of the sudden brought back to life. I was staying in a “casa particular”, renting a room with a cuban family in the Vedado area. From there I would go exploring the neighborhood, stroll down via Calle Neptuno down to Central Habana and spend the evenings on Malecon, looking at the sea and listening to Rhumba rhythms in the distance.
Like one of my dear friends used to say, “living the good life”. If you’re a tourist, a visitor, a white man, asian, have double citizenship, have political connections, basically life is good if you’re anything other than a Cuban.
When I was growing up, people coming visiting from the West were commonly referred to as coming from “the outside”. This expression is still used today. I remember my reactions to anything coming from the “outside” – toys, books, candy, cartoons. And people. I would look at them as if they were coming from another planet, aliens coming from a world where anything was possible, magical beings coming and going as they pleased, superheroes.
Now I was one of them. More than the food and travel restrictions that hinder the cuban life (special permit required to travel inside Cuba, that was a new one for me), more than the economic struggle, poverty, censorship, one can sense the feeling of isolation and the eternal wait for change, crossing the finish line. I know that feeling all too well.
But underneath all this, there is actually pure joy, creativity, dancing. I’m not talking about the fake carnival acts that happen in the tourist areas of Old Havana. A Rhumba celebration show at the Writer’s House in Vedado brings all participants to life, moving to the hypnotic rhythm for hours, while rain is falling.
Music has something magical here, it’s pure, true, raw. Like dancing, it brings memories from a very long past, it cries, it paints the air in wild colours, it’s savage, unchained.
Don’t know if I liked Havana. But I’ll go back.
Just in case anyone is wondering, sometimes I write the name of the city Havana, some other times Habana. I don’t mean anything by it, the “official” name is Habana but both are in circulation so sometimes I use one, some other time another, that’s all.
Hope you enjoy the photos.
Have managed to recover the settings… 
I’ve come back from Habana with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.
Walking the streets in the various districts, sometimes I felt too embarrassed to even take the camera out.
Dozens of photographers looking like a hunting party were inspecting every corner of the streets, every face, every shadow, no stone left unturned.
In some culture, people don’t mind this. They welcome you with open arms and you can have a field day walking around with your big and obtrusive SLR with a huge zoom on top of it, making a Kalashnikov noise every time the shutter closes, nobody would mind.
But in some other cultures, people are more sensitive. Especially in those places where privacy is on of the few things left and where taking an unwanted photo can be seen as not respecting someone’s dignity.
A kid on a street was paying baseball with his friends. When a group of foreigners approached, he started screaming “no quiero foto” and covered his face with the baseball glove.
My camera was in the bag at that time but I felt his screamed acusation directed at me and at what photography has started to represent in some areas: intrusion, lack of respect, agression.
I like candid photography and I realize that it requires observing and photographing an unaware subject. But I feel is a big difference between being invisible to an environment, getting people used to you as being there, be part of the scenery so they don’t realize/care you’re taking a photo, and just showing up and start marching in uninvited in their lives, metaphorically speaking.
I’m not saying we should aim for getting Releas Forms from all the people we photograph, but sometimes just a look, a question, a gesture is enough to create a relation, get accepted, and gain trust.
Keep your camera out. Aproach first, ask, show understanding and respect. If they want to be photographed, they’ll wait for you, you’ll be able to put them in the right light, select your composition, do your work. At least show them the picture you’ve taken of them, before showing it to th world on www. IN the end, you may even part as friends.
Just when you think you finally understand what’s going on with all this stuff that’s supposed to help you with your work, it manages to surprise you yet again!
So, lesson for today:
Web templates created in Lightroom are not saved with the catalog. Everything else seems to be, but the web templates are located in an obscure file somwhere on the C: drive in Windows. I have no idea where since all my photo files including Lightroom folder are on external hard drive and it never occurred to me (duh!) to think that in their ultimate wisdom, Adobe have spread important files all over the place. Given that my old PC (over two years now, who thought it would last that long??) can’t even load the BIOS anymore, there’s no chance I’ll get those back very soon.
So it will be a while longer until I get to post them on the website.
The photo is not really related to anything above. Taken on Malecon at sunset.
I know I didn’t write in a long time, I just got back from a photo trip to Habana. Photos will be on the site soon, but, while the feeling is fresh, just wanted to say what a great experience this has been for me.
I’m always interested in human emotion and it’s been a really long time since I’ve experienced such a mix of sorrow, joy, hope, sadness and melancholy, on such a huge scale.
I intended to write about it while I was there, but Internet is rather a strange curiosity so will post my thoughts over the next few days.