The exceptional photographs in this publication capture the complexity of the Cuban Revolution in all its contradictory beauty. From Constantino Arias’s portraits of poverty and wealth in pre-Revolutionary Havana to the photographs of the dead Che Guevara in Bolivia, the Cuban story was told in silver gelatin as much as it was in words. Snapshots of Fidel Castro playing golf or hunting in the Soviet Union complement iconic pictures of Che Guevara by Alberto Korda and Rene Burri, and yet revolutionary Cuba was taking its first steps during one of the hottest periods of the Cold War. The political and the personal merge in this collection to reveal startlingly intimate portraits of Che Guevara by Andrew Saint-George and photographs of the local, forbidden pop culture in the mid-sixties by Jose Figueroa.
Throughout the publication there is an exhilarating tension between heroic portraiture of the leaders—Castro, Guevara, and Cienfuegos—and the dramatic “staging” of a people in the throes of revolutionary transformation.