60 Years of Revelation
published date: Dec 22, 2020
This is a small selection of a larger photographic project about my experience in Cuba after four years living in the United States. All the photographs were taken in 2019, sixty years after the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
A limited-edition book was published in 2020. Unfortunately, the book's production was discontinued in December of the same year. Nonetheless, a small part of the book/project has been published on this site. Part of the writing was omitted from the publication as well as part of the photographic collection.
60 Years of Revelations is a tiny part of a much larger work in progress about the Cuban Regime that will be published in the forthcoming years.
At first, there was no plan or intention. My first visit to Cuba after moving to the US in 2015 was just that, a time to visit my family and my home country. Five minutes after leaving the airport, I was in a constant state of revelation. Thousands of thoughts appeared in my mind after seeing the depressing living images walking across a place with no hope, with no intent, with no will. Sixty years had been since a Revolution that, for most, was nothing more than the simple decay of a society. Now I stand, trying to show the very essence of the world we live in. Something that will call for feelings of despair, but it is, at the very least, only a revelation. Understand that, for me, this is a constant apocalyptic reminder of the place I once called home.
There are so many questions. I ask, how could a society fall so deep that the very notion of up is no longer present? I ask, how did we let this happen to our community? I ask why them? Why us? And it's so miserable to look at their eyes and see nothing but sadness and disappointment in the very experience of being alive. Their circumstances lead them to ask questions as well. If all humans are entitled to free will, why doesn't it seem like I am truly free? How come my actions are ruled by someone other than myself? How come I know that there is something better, yet I cannot do anything but imagine a world in which an autocratic regime no longer governs. But Imagine some say. Imagine what? The visualization of something better? How can one imagine if one doesn't know any better? Cubans currently live under a government with an absolute ruling power, which tells them what to say and what to do with their lives. However, the worse part is that the fear which dominates their minds doesn't even let them see a way out of the constant misery.
