Located on the east side of Plaza Beja, Fototeca is the blue two-story building in the center. At leftr: Mario Diaz, Antonio (Tony), Ilian Cepero and rhe daekroom manager.
- CHAPTER 4 -
My First Look at Cuba
Thursday, February 25
It's morning in Havana. Finally, I’m here. Anna and I had breakfast on the rooftop patio. A blond airline attendant is doing Tai Chi on a mat by the pool. It's cool by tropical standards, delightful for someone who had just left a Maine winter 24 hours ago. Cold fronts do indeed reach this far south, past Florida, to chill Cuba. I'm wearing pants and a shirt today, and I'll need a jacket tonight. It must be extremely hot during the summer.
Since we share Maine's time zone, there's no jet lag. When I visit our sites in Europe, it takes me a week to adjust to the 6-hour time difference. By the time I leave, my jet lag is just ending.
I look down from the rooftop patio to watch people walking on their way to work. New and ancient taxis line up outside the hotel, and an old man is sweeping the walkways in the park. The day is starting to heat up, suggesting that the cool weather in this area is fleeting.
I feel like I’ve just stepped into a postcard—a surreal experience. There were times, in my 20s, 30s, or 40s, when I would've been thrilled, vibrating with the experience of arriving in a foreign culture—alive, aware, totally here.
After breakfast, Anna and I head off to find Cuba’s photography center, Fototeca. We walk into Old Havana, through narrow streets and alleys, past children playing and laborers working on the potholes. Old cars, bikes, trucks, and cars—even bicycles—all seem to be held together by ingenuity. People hang out the windows on the second and third stories, chatting across the alleys. Laundry hangs over the street like banners for some celebration. The apartment buildings, once grand residences, are now tenements; their glory has faded and their opulence has been forgotten. Doorways open to an interior courtyard with winding stairs on the upper floors. This could be any old European city at the end of World War Two.
We find Fototeca on Plaza Vieja in Old Havana, a 15-minute walk from the hotel. This is a two-story building with a blue and white facade facing west onto the Plaza. The entrance leads up four steps to a porch under a portico, after which you pass through the front door. Inside, there is a lobby with a desk, galleries to the left and right, and an open gardened courtyard further in. Stairs lead up both sides of the lobby to a larger gallery above, which opens onto a porch overlooking the Plaza. More photographs. A small B&W darkroom is on the mezzanine.
We met Mario Diaz, the director of Fototeca, in his office off the gallery. The walls host framed prints of Castro entering Havana, Hemingway on his fishing boat, and a print by Graciela Iturbide, a Mexican photographer I know who has been to Rockport. Marco speaks some English, but it’s easier for him to talk in Spanish, so Anna takes over. We meet Antonio (Tony), the administrator in a Che t-shirt; Ismael, who runs the darkroom; a small, dark, black beard and hair; and Figueroa, a local photographer.
Iliana Cepero, the center’s curator, is a petite, attractive Cuban woman in her mid-twenties. Her long, straight, black hair cascades to her shoulders, framing an oval face, a high brow, dark brown eyes, and a smile that appears to never leave her lips. Her movements are delicate and feminine, as if she were a dancer in her youth.
Introduction done, we get down to the reason for our visit. Anna explains that we want to bring a series of photography workshops to Havana led by recognized photographers. Is Fototeca interested in becoming a partner and sponsoring this effort?
"Will having 50 photographers in Havana be a problem?" I ask her to inquire. She asks.
“Fifty photographers?” Marco exclaims. “Here? In Cuba? There are 50 photographers here right now—they're called tourists,” he laughs.
Anna, Marco, and his staff are chatting in Spanish. I look on as if I understood every word, nodding and laughing along with the others. They don’t need to know I’m as dumb as a pail of rocks when it comes to their language. Occasionally, Anna stops to share her progress with me in English. Thank God she knows the workshop, what it is we're looking for, and why we’re here.
I can see Marco becoming excited about the details Anna is presenting. Later, Anna tells me that Marco will want to know what's in it for him.
“You know, a bribe,” she whispers. “You will need someone like him to run interference with the Ministry of Culture to get cultural visas for the US citizens coming down."
Marco told Anna that Fototeca would be interested in hosting the program and promised to set up a meeting with the Ministry of Culture and the Plastic Arts Counsel in a few days.
“That was easy,” I say to Anna as we get up to leave.
“Don’t count your chickens, David. This is Cuba," she adds,
Rooftop view of Central Havana, from the Parque Central Hotel, February 24, 1999