Why Black and White?
It was a modest house, tucked away in a quiet barrio—my Abuela’s sister’s home, where our voices had carried softly across tiled floors and the afternoon heat pressed with intensity against the shutters. We had just said our goodbyes when I slid into the front seat of the car. The streets pulsed with their own unruly rhythm. The buildings, though faded and crumbling at the edges, seemed to exhale memory with every crack in their facades. But it was the people who gave Havana its heartbeat. They didn’t just inhabit the streets; they charged through them, each one carving a path with quiet purpose, stories in their eyes—but something inside me had shifted.
As we drove toward Parque Central, thirty minutes of cracked pavement and casual stares, I found myself adrift in thought. Not the thoughts of a tourist gathering stories to tell, but something more urgent, more quiet. The kind of reflection that creeps in unnoticed, like dusk settling over Havana’s rooftops.
I had studied Cuba before I ever set foot on her soil. Page after page of glossy photobooks—those curated testaments to vibrance—had painted a country of endless carnival: bright colors, wide smiles, arms always open in embrace or dance. But already, within hours of arriving, I knew those images had only skimmed the surface. The real Cuba didn’t shout in Technicolor—it breathed in layers. And in that breath, I felt a calling.
By the time we passed El Capitolio, I had made my decision. I would photograph only in black and white.
This was 1996. Digital cameras were still a whisper on the horizon. Film was tangible—something you loaded with intention, carried with care. There was no room for excess. Every frame mattered.
Why black and white? Because color, for all its seduction, sometimes distracts. It pleads for attention. But black and white— It waits. It listens. It strips the world to its bones—the play of light, the curve of a gesture, the hush of a moment just before it fades. In monochrome, what matters isn’t what draws your eye, but what stirs your soul.
A street corner becomes a stage. A shadow cast just right becomes a sigh. A woman leaning from her balcony is no longer just architecture and habit—she is memory. She is mood. She is a story whispered rather than told. These images—unposed, unscripted—remind us that life is not always in motion. Sometimes, it’s in the stillness where we find its pulse.
There is no masquerade in black and white. A child’s eyes hold no filter. The wear on a face tells of struggle, of survival—and also of joy. Look long enough and you’ll find layers that color might conceal: the weight of longing, the quiet defiance in laughter, the grace of the everyday.
These photographs are not nostalgic. They are not romanticized. They are, instead, witnesses. Rendered in silvers and greys, they linger like poems—weaving emotion into texture, presence into form. They are not simply about seeing. They are about sensing.
And so, I invite you to look with me. Not for spectacle, but for spirit. For the poetry in the unnoticed. For the heartbeat behind the glance.
This is not a catalog of what I saw. It is the beginning of what I’m still trying to understand.
Stay close—there’s more to come.
