PhotoBooks Cuba

This riveting analogy showcases the work of leading Cuban and American writers and photographers and offers unprecedented insight into life in the island nation today. While the world ponders Cuba's future, and the United States weighs the effects of the trade embargo imposed more than 40 years ago, Cubans go about their everyday lives overcoming obstacles with a mixture of about their everyday lifes overcoming obstacles with a mixture of ingenuity, intelligence, perseverance, and above all else, a sense of humor. How does this transitional moment in the island's history find expression in the lives of the Cuban people? What do the social, cultural, and personal landscapes of Cuba look and feel like today? CUBA ON THE VERGE is an honest and balanced portrayal of the complex realities of modern Cuban life.

Essays and portfolios of images are linked to central themes, incuding Afro-Cuban culture, traditional music versus the cutting edge, architecture, sexuality, Santeria, rural life, exile, and the role of women in Cuban society.

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An elegant hotel now serving as an elementary school...the parlor of a grand mansion transformed into a barbershop...these are Havana’s most intimate spaces. Having enjoyed four years of unprecedented access to the private interiors of Cuba’s capital, Andrew Moore has created an unrivaled portrait of both its legendary historic architecture and the city’s inner life. These rich and elegiac images capture intimate details and sensuous moods, creating an open-ended drama that unfolds with each viewing. Painterly light lends grandeur to Havana’s most unlikely landmarks. Andrew Moore’s work is distinguished by its singular perspective, one that combines a documentarian’s love of subject and story with an unexpected poetry.

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With insightful essays—in English and Spanish—from Louis A. Pérez Jr., America's preeminent Cuba scholar, and Ambrosio Fornet, renowned Cuban author and screenwriter, Cuba: Picturing Change introduces the work of photographer E. Wright Ledbetter, whose images create a captivating portrait of the remarkable Cuban culture as it faces the complex forces of change. Made from visits to Cuba over a four-year period (1997-2001), Ledbetter's photographs take us on a compelling journey within a culture pressured by numerous internal and external difficulties, where the resulting climate is saturated with the tension and uncertainty brought on by a political and economic future that continues to evolve with no clear direction.

The photographs and essays of Cuba: Picturing Change emerge as a beautiful, balanced, and inclusive body of work. They capture one view of Cuba on the cusp of centuries, and at the same time explore the timeless art of human perseverance and the powerful current of the ever-changing human story.

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Few cities in the world evoke for Americans the kind of mystery and exotic appeal of Havana. Always enigmatic, and hidden for forty years behind a veil of political intrigue, it is hard to believe that few Americans have visited this city just a day's boat ride away from our own shores. In Havana (Prestel), award-winning photographer Hans Engels applies a keen eye and ahnost two decades of experience to capture a city that mixes ebullience with decay, modemity with colonialism. It is a city of sad and breathtaking beauty, and one whose brilliantly diverse architecture says much about its social and political history.

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From the indigenous simple huts known as bohios to elegant neoclassical villas, from the grand palaces of the Spanish occupation to luxurious quintas or country mansions, all the secrets and enchantments of Cuban life, past and present, remain intact today in the city of Havana, in the towns of Trinidad, Camagüey, and Santiago de Cuba, and in the countryside. This superbly illustrated book reveals a Cuban architectural heritage that is often ignored or hidden from the view of visitors to the island. Drawing upon local archives, museum records, memoirs, diaries, and other native sources, Llilian Llanes describes Cuba's architectural history from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. The evolution of Cuban architecture, influenced by climate and social conditions, parallels the cultural, political, and economic history of the island, and the houses and their decoration reflect periods of greater or lesser prosperity, as well as social inequalities. Courtyards, balconies, galleries, balustrades, grilles, and louvered doors: the evocative photographs, all in color, illustrate the subject magnificently with exterior and interior views plus close-ups of details. Extended captions explain the development of architectural features and the houses themselves over centuries and provide fascinating details of Cuban daily life, customs, and pastimes. 168 color photographs and a map.

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Exquisite, rare photographs and timely, illuminating commentary reveal a rich architectural history waiting to be rediscovered as travel to Cuba burgeons among Canadian, European, and Latin American tourists and gradually becomes more accessible to visitors from the United States as well. The lucid, intelligent text and superb photographs shot exclusively for this book present the architectural treasures of the entire island, from the first India boh'os, early colonial structures, and Mudjar craftsmanship to baroque churches, classically inspired civic buildings, ambitious modernist designs, and present-day preservation work. Now in practical paperback edition, this unique reference source will be valued by architects, preservationists, historians, students, and armchair and actual travelers.

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Living In Cuba captures the island's brilliant mix of uniquely preserved architectural and interior styles, from early colonial to baroque to art nouveau and art deco, and brings to life its exotic atmosphere, people and history.

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Making Home in Havana is an elegant book of photographs and testimonies, recording, questioning, and evoking the meaning of place-in particular, the meaning of home. The combination of fine photography and the words of residents of former palaces, humble apartments, and other dwellings offers us an irresistible portrait of Havana that might otherwise be lost forever.

Vincenzo Pietropaolo and Cecelia Lawless have made numerous visits to Havana in order to fully understand and convey the essence of what home means to the inhabitants of the dwellings of the El Vedado and Centro Habana neighborhoods. Together, they-and we-explore how a building becomes a home through its human history as well as its architectural features. With some renovation already underway in colonial Havana, they concentrate on largely unexplored and unrecognized sections that continue to fall into ruin. The intimacy of their connection with the buildings and people offers us a rare combination of documentary realism and high art. Residents of Havana tell their stories of lifelong efforts to turn decay into beauty, while the photographer's evocative pictures enable us to feel exactly what they are talking about-a creation of time and space called home.

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Just the mention of the word "Cuba" brings to mind so many ideas and images. One thinks of lively music, energetic dance, sun-bleached Spanish architecture, cigars, 50s era automobiles, and Fidel Castro. Xavier Zimbardo traveled to Cuba and lived there for many months learning about this paradoxical island and its people. With the eyes of a journalist and an artist, he captures the essence of all we think of Cuba, yet surprises us with images wholly new and unexpected. Through his vibrant color photographs, we can feel the heat of the sun, hear the laughter and cheers of children, and see the movements of dancers. With over one hundred pulsating, full-color photographs, Cuba: Mi Amor is a treasure; it gives us an original, intimate and stunning and very current glimpse of this vivacious island.

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Cuba's unusual mix of cultural diversity, fallen grandeur, and enduring socialism has made it one of the most misunderstood countries. Nonetheless, visitors are enchanted by the light, the colors, and the rhythms of this warm, welcoming land. This collection of pictures and essays offers contemporary views and a passionate history of the largest of the islands edging the Gulf of Mexico. The journey surveys Cuba's magnificent but decaying beauty, its rich baroque architecture, its profusion of 1950s American cars, its natural treasures, the African outpost of Santiago, the mysteries of Santeria, and much more. Cuba celebrates a country that remains as beautiful today as when Christopher Columbus first saw it 500 years ago.

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