Mixed Media
“Conversation: Photography in Cuba” at CCA
Every one of the images in photographer Nelson Ramirez’s Hotel
Habana series tells multiple stories about the Cuban capital. The collaging or layering effect Ramirez employed for the 2008-2015 portfolio is “sort of a speculative fantasy of Cuba becoming a capitalistic commercial center,” his longtime friend Stuart Ashman said. “He started years ago photographing historic areas of Havana and then superimposed images on Mylar that had neon signs with brand names. Then he figured out how to do it digitally.”
Ramirez and Ashman, who is executive director of the Center for Contemporary Arts, present an illustrated conversation at the CCA Tank Garage at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 8. The two met in Havana in the late 1990s when Ashman, who is also Cuban, was researching the photography of that nation when he was director of the Museum of Fine Arts (since renamed the New Mexico Museum of Art). Ramirez is director of Havana’s Fototeca de Cuba, the country’s premier museum of photography, as well as the curator for La Fábrica de Arte Cubano, “which is like a giant CCA in an old olive-oil factory,” Ashman said. “It opens at 8 p.m. and there are 2,500 people there every night.”
Photography has been a big deal in the city for a very long time. “Its first photography gallery was in 1840, which is only four years after photography was invented,” Ashman said. “And in 1900, photography was very important in three cities: Paris, New York, and Havana.”
Admission to “Conversation: Photography in Cuba” is $5. CCA is at 1050 Old Pecos Trail; call 505-982-1338 for more information.