Cuba In Waiting

Abstract

The beautifully crumbling facades of buildings and infrastructure attract many visitors from all over the world who wish to catch a nostalgic glimpse of the 1940s and 1950s Cuba. However, this nostalgic beauty, and the disarming warmth of the people of Cuba, hides a reality that faces most Cubans; a reality of poverty and oppressed aspirations. Cuba has seen little change since the Revolution instigated by Fidel Castro Ruz in 1959 and there is a strong hidden desire for desperately needed change. No one wants to live like this. Taken mainly in Havana Province, this photographic essay by Erik Knudsen is the result of long wanderings around the streets of Havana and the surrounding province. Moments and fragments present themselves in front of the camera to tell a moving story of a Cuba in a state of waiting. These photographs capture an elusive hope in the sadness of waiting and a strange beauty in the decaying idealism of the revolution.