Lecture reflection #1 - Cuban Photography by Nelson Ramírez de Arellano Conde

Nelson Ramirez’s “Cuban Photography” lecture gave me a more in depth knowledge about history of Cuban photography. I found a similar pattern between Japanese’s art history and Cuban’s photography history, which is that artists, or photographers, started with war and soldiers theme. As Cuban’s photographers moved into the twentieth century, they started to divide into two categories, which are the old “victory” theme and a more “realistic” category photography, and then contemporary photography started to thrive in the late twentieth century.

What amazed me the most about Ramirez’s talk were the contemporary artworks. The colors in most photographs, especially photographs about immigrants, are in black and white or in cool tones, so they bring more “unhappy” sense to the theme. I am pretty impressed by the El Viaje series of Nelson and Liudmila, who is his wife. In this contemporary photography series, they represent a journey by having a naked model inside a suitcase with her body reflecting nature scenery. This series definitely gives me more inspiration to take landscape photographs; it is not just about the scenery, but it is also about the feelings and emotions at that certain location.