Seventy hundred twenty six days.

That’s how long it was between when I first spoke to photographer and tour leader Don Toothaker (whom I barely knew at the time) about his Cuba trip and when Don and I and the rest of our group arrived in Havana earlier this month. I am sure you can easily do the mental math and realize that the pandemic was the cause of that really long gap.

However: it was completely worth that wait.

And this begins a series, in a random order, of the things I photographed. This is Estafanía, a ballet dancer who posed for us in the streets of Havana.

I took notes* during that long-ago phone call with Don, and now I see that I wrote down he promised me that I would “see parts of Cuba that people don’t usually go to” and he stressed that human element would be a vital part of every day’s shooting.

He was not wrong on either point.

Havana, Cuba
photographed 11.6.2022

*Yeah. I take notes. Keep that in mind if we every talk on the phone…