At the heart of Cuba – Images of a different way of life

In 1997-98, when photographer Christian Charlier, together with Gregor Collienne, ventured to Cuba on behalf of an advertising agency, he teamed up with local connoisseur Jose Lambert to look for classic black and white photo options. At that time, Cuban streets were full of life and music, but also dominated by Fidel Castro’s hour-long speeches and announcements. There was the official and the unofficial side: Government newspapers and official hotel reservations versus private experiences and invitations to stay overnight. Although access had to be earned through behaviour and eye contact, local hospitability and people’s willingness to share the little that they had went far beyond what we are used to in Europe. During his three-week journey to encounter people, Christian Charlier was able to harvest a generous pool of images capturing his experiences in the style of street photography. He gathered photographic impressions in the city, in the country, of the decayed, frozen-in-time atmosphere of the 1950s, on tobacco plantations, at forbidden, but tolerated cockfights and spur-of-the-moment dance music events in remote buildings – at an astonished distance and through European eyes, but always with an intention to embrace the foreign and the unfamiliar. This took him through western Cuba with main stops in Havana, Trinidad, Cienfuegos and Pinar del Rio.