Eyes on the Island

Last November, June Carolyn Erlick spent three weeks in Cuba, gathering contemporary images of the island and its people. Photography is not an easy medium to practice there: supplies are scarce, and friends rely on friends with access to laboratories to mix the necessary chemicals. Nonetheless, Erlick, publications director for the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, found abundant examples of work that shows Cuba as it is, neither positive images burnished for tourism nor negative ones chosen to make a political point. These selections, made available by the center, are simply slices of Cuban life today, captured by eight Cuban photographers and one American, David Murbach, a 1999-2000 Loeb Fellow who studied Havana’s historic horticulture.

Of her contacts with the photographers, Erlick says, her strongest impression is “how amazingly open the people are, despite the whole image of Cuba as a society where everything is controlled.”             ~The Editors