Bautista, December 29th, 1996
I break away from Havana’s spell. On a dreary morning, a chauffeur is driving me around the tobacco country. We meander in and out of Pinar del Rio. As we head for San Juan y Martinez, my eyes follow the road. They get lost among the myriad details of life in the campo. I constantly ask the driver to stop. I get out, I say hi. I ask the farmers for permission to take a few photos. With the sweetness of their words they comply. I focus, frame, and try to depict the dignity, humility and wisdom of these men. Like a probe, I’m exploring new regions of this fascinating land. After emerging from a sweeping curve, stretching before us is a landscape of gentle hills, with farmers lifting their hoes into the air, and letting them fall back again rhythmically, plowing the earth, to eradicate the weeds and clear the soil, ready for the tobacco seedlings. I instinctively stay inside the old Chevy (to watch their gestures framed by the car’s window and windshield.) My driver silently waits at the wheel. The penumbra inside the vehicle draws his silhouette. I raise my camera to place him on the left of my composition. His almost black mass works as counterweight to the gentle landscape while the farmers continue to work the soil. I shoot a few frames, trying to capture the lifting and lowering of their implements. I get out of the car as they continue their task with slow well-rehearsed gestures. I found this sentence by chance on my second trip to Cuba. Somehow I related to it and jotted it down on a piece of paper having no idea that it was describing my future end in Cuba: “Just like that, unexpectedly and abruptly, with no warning, no tell-tale sign; nothing that might have suggested that the end was coming. What a sense of futility came over me at such times, a sense of irreparable loss, weakness and helpless frustration!” - Calvert Casey
On January 6th, 2006
I was told that I could no longer teach my photographic workshops in Cuba.
On July 4th, 2006
My family and I left the island.
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