César Trasobares: Cuban Streams: 1855–1965

César Trasobares: Cuban Streams: 1855–1965

A fascinating immersion into more than 100 years of the visual heritage of Cuba, this installation by the Miami artist César Trasobares highlights photographs from the collection of Ramiro A. Fernández, who began collecting images of the island in 1981.

Although many of these images are colored by perceptions of the island as a foreign, exotic destination, the hundreds of photographs provide vivid evidence of a culture and people transitioning from Colonial rule, evolving through decades of urban and social growth, and surviving momentous historical upheavals. Through early Daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, and later photographic processes, we witness people’s daily lives, the evolution of manners and costumes, the richness of urban and rural architecture, times of war and of peace, and other compelling moments in the island nation’s history.

European and American photographers established their salons in Havana and provincial cities in the mid-1850s, initially producing the Daguerreotype portraits coveted by the public. Cuban photographers had also begun to practice by the early 1860s. With the technical advances of the medium, exposure times became shorter; and with increased demand for journalistic and souvenir pictures, photographers turned to recording the landscape and the people. Collectively, the images record an affluent country as it entered the machine age, embraced modernity, welcomed cultural diversity, and faced political struggles.

While most of the authors of these photographs remain unknown, the images speak volumes as documents that capture historical glimpses of people, places, and public events, providing unparalleled insights into agricultural and technological development, anomalous climatic disasters, important sports teams and activities, and family business enterprises. Countless personal fotos represent private moments or intimate celebrations. In image after image, the captivating textures of trees and landscapes, faces and hands, streets and cityscapes invite close and detailed inspection.

Among the archetypal photographs of the island’s people, we encounter bellas Cubanas, boys with their dogs, posed groups in elegant interiors, and portraits of a socially mandated nature. We find picturesque street characters, fruit vendors, anonymous customers, and occasionally face the lone walker of times past. We find familias at the doorsteps of their homes in the city and the country, and groups of people at public events in the capital and the provinces. In myriad images, we discover local ways of dressing for work and leisure, along with imported continental clothes, furniture, and attitudes. Visitors may get glimpses of popular events such as carnivals and the elaborate popular floats, bolero singers, cabaret personalities, and other entertainers from the realms of educated culture, along with ballet stars, imported classical music performers, and opera personalities.

The evolution of Cuba’s architectural tradition is also recorded for posterity: fortifications from the eighteenth century, mansions with carved stone and masonry work, wrought-iron residential gates, formal monuments at universities and hospitals, grand theaters, public spaces, and government buildings. We see ambitious public works built in the wake of the technological impact of the Industrial Revolution and the models introduced by the emerging economy and trade of the Nuevo Siglo—aqueducts, bridges, and highways—along with the hotels and places built for the emerging tourism industry with its fashionable visitors and imported cars.

The photographs transport us to country landscapes with bucolic brooks and rivers, monumental valleys, and endless views; to vast farms growing sugar cane and tobacco; to winding roads and majestic palmas reales; to rural homes and one-room schools. We encounter campesino culture, and the countryside bohios, derived from African and indigenous Caribbean dwellings with thatched roofs. We visit the ever-present sandy shore and stare at the vast sea beyond.

In twentieth-century photojournalism, we look down on crowds bustling around legions of Cuban politicians in open plazas. We witness a group of tourists at Sloppy Joe’s Bar. We face the clerks and the products they sell in modest bodega interiors. And we encounter the houses and the streets that sprouted along the Carretera Central, spanning the length of the island. We also see people boarding a Cubana Airlines plane on their journey to exile in the United States.

The installation opens with a selection of historical maps of Cuba that complement the photographs and correspond with them in date. The three published books about the Fernández collection are also displayed, providing a larger overview of the scope of the materials. A visitors’ journal encourages reflection and the recording of personal recollections and reactions.

César Trasobares is an artist, writer, and curator based in South Florida. Working with various media and artistic approaches in his installations, he often engages social traditions and cultural concerns of the Cuban community in Miami. At the Pérez Art Museum Miami in 2015, he organized a retrospective of the painted ceramics of Carlos Alfonzo, including his large public murals.

Ramiro A. Fernández was born in Havana to a family involved in the pharmaceutical industry. He left Cuba in 1960, settling first in Palm Beach County and then in New York, where he was a photography editor at Time Inc. for 25 years. He helped launch Entertainment Weekly and People en Español magazines, and worked at Sports Illustrated and People. A witness to the Cuban Revolution in his youth, Fernández's consuming passion has been to build a photography collection to represent the Cuba he remembers. Today his collection numbers more than 8,000 items. His book, Cuba Then, a selection of these images, was expanded and re-released as a new edition in 2018.

Cesar Trasobares: Cuban Streams: 1855–1965 is organized by Wanda Texon, MOAD's Senior Curator.