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“IMPRONTA DE LA HERMANDAD” EXHIBITION
The magical power of images
• Jorge Valiente and Bill Hackwell
follow the common threads of Cuban and U.S. people
BY MIREYA CASTAÑEDA —Granma
International staff writer—
THE
camera is just one of the aspects that unite
photographers Jorge Valiente (Cuba) and Bill
Hackwell (United States). Their work has a lot in
common, beyond differences of style. Their evident —
and magnificent — intention is to show regular
people at various moments of everyday life. It is
not a glamorous look, but a realistic one. They are
reporters, and yet... they have an artistic eye that
proves – if that were still necessary – the
symbiosis that is possible between the urgent and
the beautiful.
Valiente and Hackwell are also joined by their
search, with the magical power of their images, to
break the silence imposed by the big-business media
regarding how the Cuban and U.S. people live.
The
exhibition in Havana at the – very appropriate! –
gallery El reino de este mundo (“The Kingdom of This
World” at the José Martí National Library),
comprises100 photographs, and they achieve a balance
and a compatibility that are not based on figures –
50 for Valiente, 50 for Bill. They have a very
similar sense of composition. And, naturally, there
is the theme of showing those people as one (calling
to mind the movie Ordinary People, directed
by Robert Redford).
The
Cuban has captured the lives of his people in the
shadow of more than 45 years of blockade imposed by
Washington, while the U.S. American has done so with
struggles and a way of life very different from the
image we are sold.
There are more coincidences between them. We
discover that after asking our first question of
both, in front of their photos. How did they begin?
It turns out that the greatest impact on both their
lives was war, which impels them, precisely, to
fight with that powerful weapon, the camera.
JV:
Before the Revolution, I had taken photos once with
a little box camera. Later, I was a driver for the
Revolución newspaper during the Bay of Pigs
invasion, and when I found myself in the midst of
those events – I was there on the 19th (of April,
1961) – there I was and I couldn’t take a photo,
because I didn’t know how and I didn’t have a good
camera to shoot it with, I made a serious decision
to become a photographer, and began looking for
books, advice, until I was granted a correspondence
course from the Institute of Photography in New
York, and was able to use the little English I had
to learn something, and kept on studying until I
became a photographer for Revolución and then
for Granma.
It
was the same for Bill. Vietnam happened to him.
BH:
I was 18 years old when I went into the Army; we
didn’t question anything. When I arrived in Vietnam
as a war correspondent, my perspective of the world
changed dramatically. That period had a large
influence on my photography, because what happened
to me happened to many others, and I think it’s
happening now in Iraq. We soldiers understood, we
knew in our hearts, that what we were doing was
wrong, that it was an injustice. Many took drugs and
had other problems. What I did was to take my camera
and instead of photographing the war, I began to
photograph the Vietnamese people. Like Valiente’s
photos, understanding how people would look for food
in the midst of that war, and I began to transform
myself into a social photographer. To capture
images, to capture what people feel.
The
organization of the exhibition is equally
intelligent. That dialogue of what those
photographers see through their lenses every day.
Valiente more given to portraits, seeking the
psychology of the characters, reveals emotions. He
uses black and white, given that chiaroscuro is
fundamental to enriching the details of his images.
Hackwell explained that he began to organize an
exhibition four years ago.
I
wanted to show in other countries that many people
in the United States have mobilized in trying to
change their destiny, because I think that the
perception in other countries is that everything is
all right for U.S. Americans: they have a car, a
home; everything is marvelous and that is not the
truth. For example, I include the photo of that
homeless person to show that there are millions of
homeless people in the United States, the richest
country in the world. Right now there are 90,000
homeless people in Los Angeles. I want people to see
that and to see that we are beginning to do things
to change that, to put pressure on the system. That
was my intention, but now I understand that there
are many people in the United States who also need
to see it, as a way of encouraging them, because
right now the Bush administration has the lowest
popular rating of any president; people are
questioning it; it has lost the confidence of the
people. All the lies that it is telling and that the
media is putting out. For that reason I hope that
this exhibition will offer another view of life in
the United States and when they show it in my
country that it will help people to say, ‘I too can
do something.’
I am
surprised that Hackwell’s photos, in particular his
recent ones, are also in black and white (the first
taken in New York in 1979 and the last in 2006).
B.H.
You’ve discovered a secret. In the last 10 years
photographic techniques have changed dramatically.
Almost all photographers today are using digital
cameras. I tried to stay with film as long as I
could, but in February 2005 I had to begin to move
over to digital. I printed all these photos up until
that date in my own darkroom at home and since then
I have moved on to digital shots. You can see
something different. I’m still not comfortable with
the digital world, although I can take color photos
and easily convert them into black and white, but I
still have my own struggle with that and I miss
film. There’s something different. There is
something special in the darkroom and seeing the
photo emerge on the paper. You take a photo and
think how the negative will come out and it is more
emotional. You anticipate what it will be like, but
you haven’t seen it, it’s like giving birth. You see
the image born. If there is a photo that I like it’s
very emotional, my heart stops and I say to myself:
‘That’s what I wanted.’ With a digital camera
there’s a distancing from the image, I don’t feel
exactly the same.
Hackwell, a social photo-reporter, has been in the
Cuba solidarity movement for many years and is a
member of the Free the Five national committee in
the United States. It is a detail of his rich
biography that is impossible to avoid because a tour
of his part of the exhibition begins with a letter
from one of the five Cuban prisoners, Gerardo
Hernández, and because Hackwell reveals to us an
interesting aspect of the selection of his photos.
BH:
There are 50 photos here. In fact I wanted to show
75. I brought 50 to have a balance with Valiente’s
50. As you know, Alicia (Jrapko) and I have visited
Gerardo many times. It is part of our solidarity
work, but along the way we have become friends.
Gerardo and I have worked on many photographic
projects. I send him photos, he uses them to respond
to the hundreds of letters of solidarity that he
receives every week and, in real terms, Gerardo has
been a great international promoter of my photos. So
solidarity is two-way. I respect his perspective of
the world and before selecting the 50 out of the 75,
I sent Gerardo the proofs so that he could see them,
criticize them and help me to select them, and he
made magnificent comments on the ones he thought
would be good to show here. I always dedicate my
exhibitions to the Five and in this one Gerardo was
in the selection process.
The
Impronta de la Hermandad exhibition is almost
a survey. Valiente shows how the Cuban people live,
suffer and enjoy themselves in spite of the blockade
and Hackwell the social and anti-war struggles in
the United States. As Gerardo notes in his letter
from the Victorville Federal Penitentiary in
California, it is “a war against the silence¼ of the
large transnationals¼ unleashed¼ with the lens of
the camera as a powerful weapon.”
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