Lost in Fidel's Cuba

 In this issue:

• A7R VI ebook - pre-order yours now at a discount!
• Uganda Update
• Lost in Fidel's Cuba

Sony A7R VI Ebook

I've received a large number of emails asking if I'll be working on a new book covering the new 67 megapixel Sony A7R VI, including the new features and the new menu system (and another reason they needed to introduce a new battery).  The answer is YES.  Mine is already on order and I'll start as soon as it arrives.  If all goes well it will be finished by early August if not sooner.  

You can pre-order your copy at a 10% discount here.

Uganda Update

Last week I contacted Dr. Schiff, the subject of my ongoing project documenting his work in Uganda.  I asked him if the samples he and his team took out in the field had arrived at Yale for analysis yet.  The answer is yes, and he adds "The samples we collected are proving rather incredible. Evidence of the pathogenic Paenibacillus bacteria in soil, cow milk, and … many fish."

So now the question isn't "How is the bacterium getting into these infants?", it's more like "Why isn't EVERYONE getting infected??"  And time is of the essence, since cases have already begun to show up in the U.S. and nobody knows how or the best way to treat it.

I'll have more to say about this story in a future blog post.  Stay tuned.

Lost in Fidel's Cuba

Cuba has been in the news a lot recently; now seems a good time to tell the story of my visit there two decades ago.

All my life I had heard that Cuba was a photographer’s playground.  But the only pictures I ever saw from Cuba were from Havana, its largest city.  What was the rest of Castro’s Cuba like?  

I found out in 2006, when I had an opportunity to travel to the Northeastern corner of the island with others who had been there before and knew many of the locals.  We flew directly into the city of Holguin, and spent two weeks in a tiny rental car, traveling on dirt roads going from village to village, making friends and taking pictures and delivering much-needed medical supplies.   An ideal trip!! (As always, click on any image to view larger and sharper.)

With me were my 6 MP Konica Minolta 7D (Minolta's first DSLR), 11-18mm, 24-105mm, and 100-300mm APO lenses, and another trusty camera – my Konica Minolta A2 – as a backup.  

The first thing you should know about Cuba is that not all cars are classic American cars of the 50’s.  Yes, they were there, and yes, I took pictures of a great deal of them, but the vast majority of cars I saw were either trucks, ox-drawn carts, or tiny Renault cars.  

The tiny Renault cars were far more prevalent.

The second thing you should know is they have set up 2 separate economies – one for the tourists, and one for its citizens.  Visitors can only exchange their hard currency for “Tourist Dollars”, which can only be spent in tourist hotels and restaurants.  They are of no value anywhere else.  This is good for the Government, of course, who can now have their finger in what would otherwise be an underground economy, but awful for people like us, who want to patronize local businesses and eschew touristy stuff.  It is also having a slightly negative impact on morale, since the maids who are lucky enough to work in the tourist hotels and resorts can make substantially more money than the average Cuban doctor.  

A Cuban nurse.  Windows can make great portrait light.

Those balloons the boys are playing with? 
They're inflated condoms.

I also learned that Cuba has more doctors per capita than any other country.  They emphasize preventative care, and manage to keep the population relatively healthy with very few resources.  (Their infant mortality rate, for example, is lower than that of most countries, including the U.S.)  And they have a reputation for being able to work in very poor conditions (think “Doctors without Borders”).

 

Much of Cuba’s economic problems are a bit puzzling.  Although the Americans have kept a trade embargo on the island since the rise of Fidel, no other country has announced similar intentions. Tourists flood to Cuba from all over the world for the tremendous travel bargains.  Small cars are imported from Europe.  Israel and others have invested in their farms.  Why does there continue to be such drastic shortages of basic goods?  Why does much of the population still live in (what seems to us) poverty-level conditions?

Better than Bread Crumbs

The way I usually photograph countries that I visit is to establish some sort of rapport with everyone I meet first before I ever pick up my camera - even if I don’t speak the same language.  Then I’ll show them the first shot or two on the camera’s display, and after that I usually have the most un-shy subjects a foreign photographer could hope for. 

Notice I used the word “usually”.  Cuba was the first country I visited where I didn’t actually have to work that hard to build rapport.  Once people saw my camera they became excited and started posing for me.  Some even invited me into their homes and had me take pictures of them next to their television sets (a status symbol!).  I never had it so easy.  Between the people, the aging buildings and the 50’s era cars, how could I NOT come back with licenseable images?

Their friendliness helped in another way, too.  One day I was wandering around the streets of the Gibara fishing village, and took a quick detour when I saw an impromptu dominos game taking place on the sidewalk.  After shooting a few frames, I started strking up small conversations using my very poor Spanish, and learned that one of the players was a musician.  I instantly whipped out my Xaphoon (a small musical instrument which I carry everywhere and is another great way to make new friends in foreign lands; see https://Xaphoon.com ) and started to play a few tunes.  He became so excited that he brought me up to his apartment and started going through his old photographs - and there was a picture of him when he was a band leader during Cuba's heyday!  The portrait I took of him just then is my favorite image from the entire trip, and ended up running as a full-page image in Photoworld magazine. 

Alas, this side trip had caused me to become separated from the three others I was traveling with, and of course I had not taken any mental navigation notes since I figured my friends would know the way back.  

I WAS LOST!!  

After wandering aimlessly for two hours without recognizing a single landmark, I suddenly realized that I had taken many "bread crumb" pictures on my camera -- each image showing scenes from the path I had traversed.  At the very beginning of the day I took a picture of the family we were staying with.  

I called up the image and stopped a random bystander: "Donde está ésta familia?"  (“Where is this family?”)  Being a small village everyone knew everyone else, and the man kindly walked me to the very house I was seeking.  Saved by a digital camera and the kindness of strangers!

[Epilogue: The detour was worth it; for the picture I took of the sidewalk Dominos game was licensed for use as a cover to a book in Finland.  And of course you already know about the Photoworld full-page image.]

The book cover from Finland.  You can see my image at the bottom. 

 My standard procedure when traveling is to get people’s mailing addresses and then send them pictures after I return home.  But Cuba was the first country I’ve ever visited where the addresses that people wrote down for me were completely illegible.  The solution?  I scanned the handwritten addresses and pasted them onto the envelope, along with thumbnail images of the intended recipients.  (Hey, if the post office can’t read the writing, the village was small enough that the pictures would surely ensure proper routing of the letters.)  And it worked!!

Will this get to him?

It worked!  He sent back a wonderful handwritten
letter and this picture of his family.  Photography is a great way to make friends.

Not as safe as you think

While I was there, all the interesting stuff was taking place in Havana.  A well-known Czech supermodel-turned-disadvantaged children’s advocate, Helena Houdova, was arrested in Cuba for taking photographs in a slum (and was not allowed to talk to the Czech embassy while in custody!). Also, Castro had arranged a huge Anti-American rally, protesting an electronic sign installed outside a U.S. Mission building which spewed excerpts from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The protest, which drew hundreds of thousands of people (who were promised an additional day off for participating), brought traffic to a standstill for several hours, and it was covered on all the TV channels for hours.  Posters compared US President George Bush with Adolph Hitler.  (I wish I could have snapped a photo of THAT!) 

Probably most entertaining for me was to watch Castro on local TV almost every night, looking quite old and disoriented, hosting Town Hall meetings and rambling on for tens of minutes in answering a simple question. 

Sustainable agriculture

In the past Cuba’s economy relied heavily on sugar production, which was sold at higher-than-market prices to their main ally, the Soviet Union.  When the Soviet Union broke apart, not only did their revenue stream evaporate, but the years of overproduction had taken its toll on the soil.  In the early 1990’s, many experts on sustainable agriculture have come in and advised Cubans on alternative crops, growing without the use of fertilizers or pesticides (or heavy machinery), and breaking up state farms into individual and cooperative farms, each one having land set aside to feed its owners.  The goal was for the island to become completely self-sustaining.  Looking back, the  push for organic farming seems to have met their goals.  (Mostly.)

Cabbages for sale.

One of the reasons I felt it was important to grab this travel opportunity was the perception of scarcity – once Castro dies, it was expected that everything would change, and the kind of charm that 2006 Cuba provided might be gone forever.  I am certainly glad I made the trip!

 

Other Photos from the Trip

Where's the rest of her?

"Please take our picture!"

Why God invented underexposure.

A street portrait.

The Carlos de la Torre y Huerta Natural History Museum
(Museo de Historia Natural), located in Holguín, Cuba

I even used fill-flash outdoors using a bounce card.  The 7D balanced flash and
ambient light beautifully.  Modern Sony cameras do not.

This is me with my Covid beard, doing my Fidel Castro impersonation. 
(Truthfully, this picture doesn't belong in this blog post.  I do this because I get bored easily.)

Many other images can be found on my stock image website, https://www.friedmanarchives.com/cuba-and-the-caribbean/ .

Until next time,

Yours Truly, Gary Friedman

"Home of the densist blog posts on the planet" ™