Seeing Havana: 2010 to 2026

In Havana, architecture is a revelation. The built environment bears the imprint of several architectural movements while bearing witness to the tumultuous political and economic eruptions that define Cuba as no where else. With no discernible business district nearly every block is a mix of store fronts and residential space. And like a well-shuffled deck of cards swept across a table any given street will display a striking variety of formal and stylistic gestures, their differences lessened by the passage of time.

Here the Habaneros make their way among the buildings and narrow streets they know like their own skin. The sidewalk vendors, uniformed school kids, the administrators, the hustlers trying to con a few pesos out of thin air all seem to emanate like spirits (Orishas) from the musty walls and doorways, the colonnades, the grand, oft-broken buildings.

I, too, drift among the buildings and streets a mere witness to this dazzling, crumbling city; trying to see the place, it’s signals and layers, trying to make a picture that will resonate at the same pitch as the scene it is extracted from.