Page 59 - Via Condotti
P. 59
La Habana Vieja, the cafes, the historical work-
shops, the interiors of palaces and houses with
walls encrusted by time and where time seems
to stand still. There is all the decadent charm
of the Cuban capital in the shots signed by the
German Bernhard Hartmann and collected in
the book Havana published by teNeues and Yel-
lowKorner. Images that lead behind the facades
of buildings and houses, in dusty places that
seem plagued by a slow decline that doesn’t
culminate in melancholy, but rather it stays the-
re with all its unresolved contradictions. “This
image of the city will soon change. It is the right
time for a break and to look more closely at the
life of the capital” says the photographer from
Frankfurt, who wants to give a deep and inti-
mate portrait of Havana before the city lose its
true identity, in the wake of the opening by the
United States ( today sorely challenged by the
new president Donald Trump). Because if I say
Havana I (still) imagine the American cars of the
Fifties, the colonial buildings aged by time, the
heroes of the Revolution along with the symbols
of religion, the bright colors of the Caribbean.
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