Human landscapes
Cuban photographer Raúl Cañibano talks to Dr James Cli ord Kent about his new book, Absolut Cuba, and his chronicling of life in Cuba over the past three decades
Raúl Cañibano is celebrated today as one of Cuba’s greatest living photographers. His documentary-style black & white photos have influenced several generations of photographers – particularly in Havana, where Cañibano is regarded by young artists as a kind of ‘monstruo’; a legend in the world of photography and a national treasure.
Absolut Cuba – Cañibano’s latest photobook – is a timely retrospective containing 100 photographs with a foreword written by one of Cuba’s most acclaimed contemporary writers, Leonardo Padura Fuentes. ’There’s always some kind of human element present in my work,’ explains Cañibano when I ask him about his deep connection with his homeland. ‘I identify very closely with the Cuban people – their character and what they are going through. I take landscape photographs – photographs of human landscapes.’
This approach is demonstrated extensively in Cañibano’s new book, in which his photographs offer a unique insight into life in Cuba over the course of the past three decades. Absolut Cuba provides an overview of the themes and subjects Cañibano has explored throughout his photographic career – a whirlwind tour of ‘Cubanidad’ (Cubanness) that is in equal parts powerful, intoxicating and profoundly moving.
Cañibano focuses his lens on everyday – yet surrealistic – Cuban scenes. Children playing on Havana’s Malecón (the city’s 8km-long sea-facing boulevard) are juxtaposed with images of guajiros (farmers) toiling in the heat, and sugarcane workers taking an afternoon nap in a makeshift camp (constructed in a children’s nursery). Elsewhere in the book, two young men lean slumped on a donkey while other boys play on a shipwreck behind them. Light and shadow are captured masterfully and poetically in black & white.
Collaboration
I first met Cañibano at the Fototeca de Cuba (the island’s main photographic archive) in Old Havana in 2018 while carrying out research for a London exhibition. Our collaboration since that initial meeting has taken us on various adventures both in Cuba and the UK that have involved curating exhibitions, taking photographs, recording interviews, running workshops, and giving public talks.
One of the privileges of working alongside Cañibano has been to witness him taking pictures in his native Cuba. It was on our first espresso-fuelled walk together around Old Havana that I became aware of his unique way of operating on the street. As we chatted, I noticed him weaving in and out of the bustling crowds on Calle Obispo (the neighbourhood’s main thoroughfare), joking with
passers-by, and establishing the type of human connection with his subjects that I’ve since learned charges his photography.
I quickly realised that Cañibano appeared to be seeing the world from a different perspective and noticing things other people didn’t. Frequently, he would disappear completely only to re-emerge minutes later having taken some photos, before placing his hand on my shoulder and asking me: “¿adónde vamos ahora, niño?” (where to now, kid?).
Context
A series of watershed moments in the latest chapter of Cuban history has led to renewed focus on Cuba and increased media speculation regarding its future.
The ‘Cuban thaw’ (the much documented normalisation of relations between the USA and Cuba under the Obama administration) was followed by former US president Donald Trump’s unravelling of that détente. The global pandemic has exacerbated Cuba’s economic crisis and its impact on tourism saw the country’s economy shrink by 11% in 2020. Widespread shortages have resulted in even harsher conditions for Cubans living on the island and unprecedented protests as people took to the streets in July 2021.
‘Personally,’ Cañibano explains, ‘the current situation has meant searching for food and medicine for my family, especially my elderly mother, meaning I’ve had to put my photography on hold. There have been moments when I’ve seen interesting photographs, but I’ve been fully focused on the scramble for everyday necessities.’ The pandemic also disrupted Cañibano’s publication plans for his photobook, which was originally due to be released in 2020.
The current crisis in Cuba mirrors to some extent the one the island faced in the early 1990s when Cañibano was finding his feet as a young photographer in the worst years of the Cuban ‘Special Period’. At this time, the island suffered economic paralysis following the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of Soviet subsidies to the island. It was during these difficult years that Cañibano visited an exhibition featuring work by the acclaimed Cuban photographer, Alfredo Sarabia. Its impact on him was life-changing. Walking home from the gallery, Cañibano realised there was a certain magical quality in photography’s ability to capture something extraordinary in the ordinary. ‘I knew right there and then,’ he tells me, ‘that I was destined to devote myself to photography for the rest of my life.’
Beginnings
Born in Havana in 1961, Cañibano moved to the Cuban countryside with his mother in the early 1960s and lived in a small town called Manatí in Las Tunas province. He returned to Havana in 1970 and trained as a welder before completing military service in 1983. Cañibano developed an interest in
photography in his early 20s, but it wasn’t until 1988 that he borrowed a camera from a friend and began to practise taking pictures.
A few years later in 1991, a friend took him to the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library) in Havana, where he pored excitedly over art books. Cañibano would lose himself in what he describes as the ‘vuelos poéticos’ (poetic flights) of the great Surrealists, including Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. He also studied the work of master photographers such as Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka and Larry Towell – all of whom would have a major influence on his way of seeing and inspired him to kick on with his own photography.
The early 1990s was a very challenging time to be starting out as a photographer in Cuba. Cañibano explains: ‘The situation meant getting hold of a camera wasn’t easy. I borrowed an old Kiev 35mm rangefinder (a Soviet and Ukrainian brand) and started taking photographs around my neighbourhood.’ He photographed birthdays, ‘quinceañeras’ (15-yearold girls’ coming-of-age birthday celebrations) and weddings. ‘I tried out different techniques, using various apertures and speeds, to find ways of capturing a decent photograph. And then later I learned to develop and process photographic material in the lab.’
Photographers on the island were dependent on films such as ORWO (an East German manufacturer) but as Soviet subsidies dwindled, so did the film supplies. Indeed, one of the reasons Cañibano’s body of work is almost exclusively shot in black & white was due to that film format – easier to obtain then and cheaper to process – being the only one that was available to him when he first started out.
Eventually, in 1995, Cañibano was forced to stop taking photographs completely and resorted to practising taking pictures with an empty camera (without a roll of film loaded). He witnessed, but was unable to photograph, various significant critical historical events, including the ‘balseros crisis’ (a mass emigration of over 35,000 Cubans travelling on makeshift rafts from Cuba to the United States). It was not until four years later in 1999, that Cañibano began taking photographs again and he seized this opportunity to explore the country with his camera.
Storytelling
Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of Cañibano’s
work is the sheer breadth of Cuban experiences that are covered in his numerous openended essays, which explore wide-ranging themes such as the city, the sea, faith, old age and the countryside. ‘I really like adventures into the unknown,’ he tells me. ‘I love travelling through rural areas in Cuba. But I am also drawn to the sea, which has a great poetic charm, and enjoy photographing Cuba’s annual festivals.’
In his new book, his deep connection with these different themes is immediately clear but it is perhaps his photographs of ‘el campo’ (the countryside) – taken from his two-decade long essay ‘Tierra Guajira’ (Country Land) – that reveal Cañibano at his most autobiographical. ‘I take inspiration for my photography from my personal experiences,’ he tells me. For the photographer, documenting the customs and ways of life of Cuban peasant families has provided him with a way of paying homage to their ‘nobleza’ (nobleness) while at the same time remembering scenes from his own childhood.
Storytelling is also central to Cañibano’s approach to composition. He describes his interest in capturing various planes in his photographs, often attempting to depict several actions and/or gestures in a single frame. He refers to these moments as ‘instantes’ (instants) and ‘el clímax’ (the climax) in which several stories appear to take place at the same time in the same photograph. ‘When I take a picture, I don’t think,’ he says. ‘It’s all instinctive – an emotional response captured by a shot in just a fraction of a second.’
There is always a lot going on in Cañibano’s photographs and this can often be disorientating and unsettling for the viewer. ‘These photographs are difficult to capture,’ he explains, ‘but that’s the challenge! I am always looking for a human element – that’s the most important and interesting aspect for me. Everything else in the image can exist around that.’
Equipment
Cañibano is always on the move and travels light. He can typically be found wandering around downtown Havana with a 35mm rangefinder hanging around his neck and enjoys talking about camera gear. But when I ask him about equipment for the purpose of this article, he is reluctant to go into detail. ‘I think what matters,’ he says, ‘is the person behind the viewfinder and whatever you want to express when you fire
Born in Havana, Cuba, Raúl Cañibano is selftaught, and his work has been published widely and exhibited internationally. It’s held in public collections, including the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the International Center of Photography. His latest book, Absolut
Cuba, was published by Edition Lammerhuber in August. Prints of his work are for sale at The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Instagram: @raul_canibanofoto
About the author: Dr James Clifford Kent is a London-based photographer and lectures on visual culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published several articles on Cuba and visual culture and is the author of the book Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City: Real and Imagined Havana.
See more on Instagram: @jamescliffordkent
the shutter of your camera.’ He continues: ‘Unless you are a press or advertising photographer, you don’t need loads of equipment to carry out a personal project. Most of my photographs have been taken with second-hand cameras, often with mechanical defects. Earlier in my career, it was unthinkable to get your hands on a good-quality camera in Cuba. They weren’t available anywhere. You were more likely to find Soviet-made Zenit cameras and they only had four speeds (30, 60, 125 and 250). It was with one of those cameras that I took my first important photographs.’
Nowadays, he enjoys the simplicity of using modern digital cameras: ‘I control the aperture and focus manually, and the camera does the rest. For the type of photography that I do, I need to react quickly, so I work with a 28mm lens that has a good depth of field.’
Future plans
Now in his 60th year, Cañibano is showing no signs of slowing down. ‘Things are really tough here at the moment,’ Cañibano says as I begin wrapping up the interview. He continues, ‘When they open up the provinces we should get out into the country and take some more photos.’ Before the pandemic, we had planned to launch a series of photography workshops on the island and hope that these will finally happen as the global situation improves.
Thinking ahead to the immediate future, he tells me about his plans to travel to Austria next month for the launch of his new book before heading to Spain to run a photography workshop. He’s also hard at work on his next book, Tierra Guajira, which will focus on photographs he has taken in Oriente (the three eastern provinces of the island) and the way these have enabled him to relive experiences from his youth. Meanwhile, a second project, ‘Bojeo’ (perimeter of an island) – inspired by the work of the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla – involves collaborating with a Spanish photographer-friend and travelling around the Cuban coastline in various trips over a three-year period. Together they intend to document the lives of Cuban families living in coastal areas, narrating their culture and way of life.