About my Cuba Photo Collection
If you are interested in purchasing framed prints of any of these photos, please visit my “Cuba” Collection here.
Background
In 2014, I decided to take a photo workshop in Havana, Cuba with the photographer Peter Turnley. I had always wanted to go to Cuba, and to be able to go with a group of photographers on a “People-to-People” trip to Havana with a pro like Peter seemed like a very exciting way to visit a place that’s been mostly off-limits to American tourism for so many decades.
The Cuba Photography Workshop
The 12 photographers in the workshop met up with Peter in Miami the night before we all flew to Havana, where we stayed from March 7-13, 2015.
Because independent tourism to Cuba isn’t allowed by the US State Department, our days were spent connecting with Cuban people throughout Havana in various environments and photographing them: we visited a ballet school, an elementary school, an outdoor boxing gym, an open-air market, the neighborhood of Regla, and the very popular outdoor dance club “La Tropical.”
At the end of the day, we returned to our hotel to individually review our photos, and select 15-20 to review with Peter and the rest of the photographers the next morning. At each photo critique and review session, Peter would work with each photographer to make a “selects” folder of their most successful images.
At the end of the week, Peter and each photographer would select the final 15 photos that would make up their individual Cuba photo story, and this is what I humbly present to you here.
Liz Scully’s Artist Statement
Photography is a pursuit which has no start and no end. There are no right or wrongs - there is simply my perspective. I love to capture unique and fleeting moments in time – in the act of capturing the photo, that moment is immortalized and will now persist historically. As I, or my perspective, will persist historically, having been the one to make the photo.
Photography is an evolving, dynamic practice: gratifying, frustrating, enlightening, meditative, surprising and incredibly freeing. Photography offers the purest form of freedom, allowing me to follow that which interests me at the moment - and anything that doesn’t interest me is left behind. As dynamic practice, my interests shift and reshape all the time and I believe my photography reflects that.
RELATED LINKS
Article on recent Cuba Travel policy, Washington Post June 2022
Street Photography Workshops with Peter Turnley - I highly recommend doing a photography workshop with Peter - I did one with him in Paris in 2014 as well as this one.
Trailer from documentary on “La Tropical” by David Turnley, Peter’s twin brother