DANIEL KUNSTLER

Welcome to the gallery of photographs I took in Cuba in March 2016. Admittedly, they stray from the immigration matters  this web site concerns itself with as a complement to my book, Passaic. Nevertheless, I hope you will enjoy them as you scroll up and down. They do join the immigration theme in that their unifying thread is human geography, and what is migration if not the ebbs and flows of that geography? Hence the name of the collection, "Cuba: People and/in Place." Indeed, you will see that most of the photographs are of people witnessed in the context of  surroundings defined less by landmarks than by the soulful signposts of society, history, work, culture, thrift and struggle. Lacking expansive homes, people live in the open, at their doorsteps, on their balconies and, in Havana, along the sea wall (Malecón).

 

These pictures were shot in Havana, Camaguey, Santa Clara, Matanzas, Remedios, and Camajuani. I used a lightweight mirrorless camera,  nothing fancy. While vivid colors are very much part of the pictorial story, a few scenes and expressions, I feel, are more faithfully conveyed when filtered  into black and white.