American photographer Keith Brown had just arrived in Cuba when he found himself caught in a torrential downpour. While huddling under a cluster of palm trees — a huge bouquet of
flowers in one hand and an unopened bottle of rum in the other — an elderly woman motioned him over and offered
him shelter.
“I’m sitting in her apartment and her son comes in and her neighbors come down [from upstairs]. I opened up the bottle of rum and we passed it around ... just talking as best we could,” Brown told the Taipei Times.
When the rain ceased, Brown departed — though not before leaving a few gifts. “I gave her half the flowers and left the bottle of rum,” he said.
This anecdote is one of many that Brown recounts while discussing his photography exhibit Cuba: The Island Garden, which opened last week at Pethany Larson Gallery, in Taipei. Although the 34-year-old Brown didn’t take a picture of his elderly host, the story is indicative of the generosity of the island’s inhabitants.
The 20 photos in the exhibit — taken between 2003 and 2005 — are the first installment in a series that Brown plans to do on the urban landscapes and peoples of Latin America. He said his interest in one of the world’s last bastions of communism stems from the island’s relationship with the US.
“Very little is known about [Cuba in the US] and a lot that is known is misunderstood or is just propaganda. The Cuban government tends to promote the best things and the US government tends to vilify the worst,” he said.
Considering the tense relations between the two countries over the past five decades, Brown said he was often amazed by the curiosity of Cubans towards him and their willingness to be his subjects.
“They wanted me to take their photographs,” he said. “I’ve never been anywhere and photographed people that were so willing. That’s why you see a lot of portraits in this [series].”
Many of these portraits show young Cubans on their daily rounds. The Rum Drinkers depicts four grinning adults relaxing out front of a shabby home, glasses of rum at their feet. Their smiling faces contrast the poverty that surrounds them.
A young girl sits on a rickety barstool in Girl With Adorable Smile. Her face radiates shy delight at being photographed. In her hand she holds a pad of paper.
The Old Baby shows an older-timer sitting on a chair behind metal bars staring directly, almost confrontationally, at the camera. The subject’s thin body hidden under ragged clothes in Grouchy Old Man suggests a life mired in poverty and hardship.
The photographs of Cuba’s urban centers capture both the island’s deteriorating cityscapes and the majesty of its historic buildings.
While some images allude to Cuba’s colonial past, others seem to serve as symbols of the country’s official communist ideology. The title of the work Socialism or Death was taken from a slogan etched on a crumbling cement tablet.
Brown avoids the trap of photographing cliches. There are no images of heroic revolutionaries orating in front of Baroque buildings. Nor are there cigar-smoking, mojito-drinking, jazz-playing Cubans. Instead he directs our attention to the friendliness of everyday people and the island’s poverty. Combined, Cuba: The Island Garden creates a sympathetic, yet unsentimental, picture of a complex society.
EXHIBITION NOTES:
What: Cuba: The Island Garden
Where: Pethany Larsen Gallery (Pethany Larsen藝坊), 30, Ln 45 Liaoning St, Taipei City
(台北市遼寧街45巷30號). Open Tuesdays through Sundays from 11am to 8pm. Tel: (02) 8772-5005
When: Until May 17
On the Net: www.pethanylarsen.com
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