Cuba hasta siempre
Magdalena Solé first visited Cuba in 2011 and has returned every year since, enchanted by the place and the people who live in this slender stretch of land. Her photographs reveal the stirrings of transformation, however subtle and hard to see, and reflect a Cuba that is both tough and vulnerable.
Cuba hasta siempre consists of more than 150 full-color photographs taken by Solé, accompanied by a foreword written by Time columnist and travel writer Pico Iyer. With minimal text, this book offers a view of Cuba beyond the tourist trade and the wealthy upper class. The photographs portray everyday settings and people engaged in daily tasks. A visual encounter with magical realism, this collection constructs an atmosphere of pervasive timelessness, a photographic time capsule. Memorabilia and objects from Cuba’s revolutionary past linger in the present, while life goes on. These soulful images offer a new visual perspective on Cuba past and present. The Wall Street Journal called Solé’s images “lushly colorful,” “formally striking,” “restless,” and “electrify[ing].”
When I look at these images, I feel the heart of the person who’s lost herself to Cuba, facing the always wide-awake and responsive faces of people who exist beyond our explanations. I find someone who refuses to settle for easy answers. The images in this work are so rendingly human and catch such vibrancy and dilapidation all at once: the brokenness I find everywhere on the island and the resilience that so humbles me. I love the way in which the camera looks for (and finds) faces, and the way those faces complicate and tell stories beyond the peeling surfaces, the bright colors all around them.
Magdalena Solé is an award-winning social documentary photographer known for her sensitive expressions of culture through color artistry. Her work has been shown internationally in over twenty exhibitions, including eighteen solo presentations. She worked as unit production manager for Man on Wire, which won an Academy Award in 2009. She is author of New Delta Rising, published by University Press of Mississippi.
