No Hay ~

I am grateful for the moment that you are here!

I want to share with you not just the photograph, but the feeling that’s been sitting with me since this moment found me. It was 1999. I didn’t think of it as anything more than a quiet encounter at the time. Just a man, a counter and a sign.

He sells kerosene. Or at least, that’s what this sign implies. The kind of place where people come not for luxury, not even for comfort, but for something as basic as fuel, to cook, to get through the night. And there he is, leaning forward, arms folded, meeting the camera without resistance.

But look closer ~ there’s that sign.

“No hay Luz Brillante.”
There is no kerosene.

I remember standing there, taking that in. The simplicity of it. No explanation, no apology. Just absence, written plainly, like it’s the normal. Like maybe tomorrow it’ll be there… or maybe not.

And what stays with me now, what really lingers, is how familiar that moment feels today.

Because here we are, all these years later, and the headlines are louder, the situation more urgent ~ no oil, failing electrical infrastructure, nights getting darker again. And I keep coming back to this image, almost by instinct, like it’s been waiting for this moment to be understood.

It makes me wonder ~ What has really changed?

Not in the big, political sense, we hear enough about that. I mean down at this level. At the counter. In the daily rhythm of showing up, even when there’s nothing to sell. That’s what gets me. He’s still there. Or someone like him is still there. The role doesn’t disappear, even when the supply does.

There’s something deeply human in that, and also something hard to look at for too long.

Because his expression, it’s not anger. It’s not even frustration, at least not on the surface. It’s something quieter. A kind of knowing. Like he’s lived this cycle enough times that the absence itself doesn’t surprise him anymore.

And sharing with you now, thinking about it, I realize this isn’t really a photograph about scarcity.

It’s about continuity.

About how life keeps arranging itself around what’s missing. How people adjust, adapt, endure, not in dramatic ways, but in these small, almost invisible acts. Writing a sign. Opening the stall anyway. Being present in a place that offers less than it can.

You know, sometimes I feel like when we look at images like this,  expecting to understand them quickly, maybe to gain some sense of life in Cuba, we look and then what? Turn the page, keep scrolling? But this one doesn’t let you do that. It slows you down. It asks you to stay a little longer than you planned.

And if you do, something shifts.

At first, you’re looking at him. But after a while, it starts to feel like he’s looking at you, at us. At the lives we’ve built around assumptions of availability, of progress, of things working the way they’re supposed to.

And there’s no accusation in it. That’s the surprising part. Just a kind of quiet presence. A witness.

Maybe that’s why this image feels more relevant now than when I took it. Not because things have gotten worse, but because the question it holds has never really gone away.

What does it mean to continue, when the conditions don’t?

And maybe more unsettling ~

What does it say about time, if a moment like this can exist unchanged, waiting decades for us to catch up to it?

Anyway, I wanted to share ~ Not just the photograph ~but the way it refuses to stay in the past.

NOW, I hope you are getting something out of this Journal ~ Please share with others that you think may just appreciate the work. Drop me a line ~ tell me what you think! 

Abrazos!