Documenting the Colors and Complexities of ‘90s Cuba

This article originally appeared on AMUSE.

Tria Giovan first travelled to Cuba in 1990. Over the following six years, she returned 12 times, and her new book, Tria Giovan: The Cuba Archive, shows 120 photographs from the 25,000 she captured. Though Giovan released a collection of Cuban images in 1996 (titled Cuba: The Elusive Island), many pictures in her new work have never been published before. They're a new window into a Cuba that no longer exists.

Giovan grew up in the Virgin Islands. When she first visited her Caribbean neighbours, Cuba (and the wider world) was experiencing a profound moment of transition. The Soviet Union's dissolution resulted in severe economic impacts in Communist states participating in the Comecon (or, Council for Mutual Economic Assistance). Foreign investments and resources shored up, leaving Cuba with major shortages in food, fuel, medicine, and more.

This decade of economic depression, known as the Special Period, spurred radical change in Cuba's economy and culture. Without access to the oil-rich Soviet's petrol, Cuba's transportation and agricultural industries were in crisis. There were power cuts and famine. The Special Period pushed Cuba to develop new methods of sustainable agriculture and mass transit systems.

Giovan captured the country during the most devastating years of the Special Period, but while her pictures were made in a time of great transition, starvation, and strife, she presents a more complex, beautiful portrait of day-to-day life. She photographed the island in rich, warm tones — washing blues, greens, pastel pinks in a golden glow. Pictures of shop-front windows and intimate interior spaces recall William Eggleston's sensitivity to the beauty of the everyday.

The most special pictures show Cuba's people: lying together on the beach, on the playground, at the hair salon, walking through wide sunlit streets, watching the sea crash on the rocks. Giovan's record is poetic, and vital.

'Tria Giovan: The Cuba Archive' is published by Damiani.