Vol. 74/No. 44      November 22, 2010

The pictures in the show were taken from the 1940s through 1968 and include many by three great Cuban photographers of that era: Luís Korda, Raúl Corrales, and Osvaldo Salas. The show features work from more than 30 photographers.

Viewers will get a good idea of what the people who made the Cuban Revolution looked like, and many of the things they did before, during, and after the revolution’s triumph in January 1959.

The first section of the exhibition, “Pre-Revolutionary Havana, 1945-57,” displays 16 shots made by freelance photographer Constantino Arias. We see rich Americans and Cubans in the hotels, a woman in a fur stole, a woman sleeping on the street, and student demonstrators under attack by the police. In this group also is the photograph of Fidel Castro and other members of the July 26th Movement leaving the Moncada prison in 1955, having been freed through a broad public protest campaign.

There are photographs from the guerrilla war in the mountains, showing Fidel, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, and other revolutionary leaders and soldiers; photographs of the first days of the revolutionary victory, including Ernesto Fernández’s photo of “Liberation Day, the Urban Militia Take Control”; and many more. There are photos from a week later by American photographer Burt Glinn snapping Fidel, Che, and Camilo all holding rifles, entering Havana on a tank. Dominating that shot is Afro-Cuban Comandante Félix Lugones Ramírez holding a rifle in his right hand and two grenades prominent on his chest.

The influence of the Cuban Revolution beyond the island is also the subject of a section of the show. One of the most interesting photos here is from New York City showing the cops attacking Blacks welcoming Fidel to Harlem and the Hotel Theresa in 1960.

What comes through this photo exhibit is the ordinariness of most of the subjects of these photographs, in the most un-ordinary of moments, making a revolution and defending it, and in the process changing who they themselves were.

Especially striking are the many photographs of peasants—on horseback, armed, or massed in the Plaza of the Revolution. Corrales’s “Sombreritos” (Little Sombreros) gives a sense of the discipline and numbers of the mobilized peasantry. Flip Schulke catches peasants with their straw hats and machetes gathering in the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana on July 26, 1959, celebrating the revolution and the first agrarian reform law, which distributed land to peasants.

The exhibit runs through January 9, 2011, and is located at the International Center of Photography Museum, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street in Manhattan.
 
 
Related articles:
Socialist Cuba sends doctors where they are needed
Cuban gov’t policies aim to strengthen economy  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home