Blog Archives
curbside mechanic
This gentleman spent a long time working on a motorcycle. His shop was a little space along the street and the curb served as his toolbox.
I am sure that a clot of photographers aiming their lenses right into his space was distracting; and I am not particularly proud that I contributed to that distraction. (This is the sort of internal conflict I felt every day in Cuba and am still trying to get my head around since I got back.) (More on that later, if I ever feel coherent enough to address it.l)
Cienfuegos, Cuba
photographed 11.9.2022
¡patria o muerte!
Homeland or death – that’s what the sign on the wall says. I do not know if there is any connection between that and the headless statue (other than the connection I made in my mind, that is), but at any rate, those things did all fit within my viewfinder.
Havana, Cuba
photographed 11.7.2022
car + driver
Me (pantomiming taking a photo)
This guy (giving a very brief nod of agreement)
And here’s the result.
Cienfuegos, Cuba
photographed 11.9.2022
estefanía in a doorway
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…
fish steps
Where I live, fish is sold from glassed-in cases in the grocery store. It smells really fishy when you walk by, and if I am being honest, I generally hold my breath.
At the market in Boston, one of the places you can get fish is from this below-street-level spot, where carefully-arranged fish are in an open-air display that uses the concrete steps to hold everything up.
It looks interesting. And it’s not even smelly.
Haymarket
Boston, Massachusetts
photographed 8.27.2022
