Under the Cuban Sun 

Florida Museum of Photographics Arts

September 22 – December 31, 2017

 

Foreword Excerpt | By Madeline P. Plonsker / Author of “The Light in Cuban Eyes”

 

Cuba lies a tantalizing ninety miles off our southern shores. It is an island that has historically been both our friend and our enemy. Nevertheless, it has always hosted a fascinating sky, which with changing weather conditions, allows the most perfect balance of light and shadow that has forever attracted both native and foreign-born photographers.

 

Throckmorton Fine Arts’s exquisite show, “Under the Cuban Sun” dramatically and intelligently helps us to draw the same conclusion: there is something about the quality of Cuban light that is different from any other Caribbean island’s offering. The brightness it produces is almost blinding. The shadow it creates is infinitely consuming. We look and are forced to look again. And that is what creates the drama of the photographs included in this carefully curated presentation.

 

The exhibition looks at both the Cuban eye and at its visitors’ eye and spans a period of time that is historic: the early 1930’s to present day. Beginning with Walker Evans and concluding with the work of Raúl Cañibano, we take a walk through time and space. They are the monumental bookends for our stroll. Walker Evans first photographed Cuba in the thirties. Raúl Cañibano is today’s masterful Cuban equivalent. Both have directed their gaze toward the nitty-gritty of Cuban everyday life: the posed dockworker, the striding schoolboy. They look out at us with their body language that speaks volumes about the human condition; which without saying a word tells us everything.