{"id":787,"date":"2009-10-07T14:25:01","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T14:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=787"},"modified":"2009-10-07T21:36:19","modified_gmt":"2009-10-07T21:36:19","slug":"viva-cuba-havana-cultura","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=787","title":{"rendered":"Viva Cuba! Havana Cultura"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been to Cuba, although like many its story has fascinated me and I’ve written in the past about the country and its photographers, including the pictures of Batista’s Cuba by Constantino Arias<\/a> (1926-92),\u00a0 Raul Corrales<\/a> (1925-2006) who in 1959 was official photographer to Fidel Castro and later worked for the government’s ‘Revolucion’ magazine and Alberto Korda<\/a> (1928-2001) whose image of Che still graces t-shirts and more around the world, as wellas\u00a0 and younger photographers such as Jos\u00e9 A. Figueroa<\/a> (1946-) and a dozen or so others.<\/p>\n

Visiting photographers have also created fine work there. Among the outstanding examples are three Magnum photographers, Burt Glinn<\/em>, who photographed the\u00a0\u00a0 Revolution<\/a>,\u00a0 David Harvey<\/a>, with some fine colour work – and he also used to run some gerat workshops there. Only the fees, air fare and carbon footprint prevented me from rushing to them. And another fine colour photographer, Alex Webb<\/a><\/p>\n

Quite different was the work of Mexican Pablo Cabado<\/em>, in his book on Cuba<\/a> in 1990 – 12 pictures on Fifty Crow<\/em>s.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

Although I haven’t yet got to Cuba, last night I did have a very enjoyable evening in Bethnal Green, thanks to Havana Cultura, a global art initiative from Havana Club Rum to introduce the world to the fabulous culture of Havana.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9
\nAlong with around 50 other bloggers I was their guest at Chamucos Bar in the basement of Green and Red more or less opposite the top of Brick Lane. The Mojitos were flowing and the music from Gilles Peterson\u0092s Havana Cultura<\/em> album to be released on 26th October was playing – and I wrote this while listening to it again – watch out for it, some great stuff. Mojito Mayhem<\/em> was one of the meetings of the London Bloggers Meetup<\/em>, and we also got a couple of presentations from fellow bloggers.<\/p>\n

\"\u00a9<\/p>\n

Havana Cultura<\/a> has a great web site with lots of information about Havana, including photographer Ren\u00e9 Pe\u00f1a’<\/a>s (b 1957) favourite views. But what was more interesting to me was to see a video of him talking about and showing his work, in particular a series called “White Things<\/em>“, exploring the way that people consume things. The pictures show them with consumer objects, not necessarily white, but lit, exposed and printed to make them white against the darker skin of the people. As well as the video and text about him and his work there are also links to some of his pictures.<\/p>\n

Doubtless somewhere on the Havana Cultura site you can also find details of the \u0091Havana Twitter Treasure Hunt<\/em>\u0092 which uses clues on Twitter\u00a0 – @_havanacultura_<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/font> and you will find the answers on the Havana Cultura’ web site. The first prize is two tickets to Gilles Peterson\u0092s exclusive Havana Cultura album launch party in Paris on 26th October.<\/p>\n

Tech Note:<\/p>\n

All pictures 24-70mm Sigma on Nikon D700, with SB800 mainly bounced from a fairly white ceiling. It was rather dark in parts of the bar and I had to turn on the focus assist light. Shooting at a ISO 2000 and on program – which gave 1\/60 f9 for most pictures – meant the ambient lighting helped fill in the distant areas. Lightroom helped a bit too!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been to Cuba, although like many its story has fascinated me and I’ve written in the past about the country and its photographers, including the pictures of Batista’s Cuba by Constantino Arias (1926-92),\u00a0 Raul Corrales (1925-2006) who in 1959 was official photographer to Fidel Castro and later worked for the government’s ‘Revolucion’ magazine … Continue reading Viva Cuba! Havana Cultura<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-photographers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}