Cuba...through photography

With the Hispanic Culture Film Festival coming to Saint Augustine next week, it is only fitting to showcase two photographers whose work has been widely praised throughout Latin America and the world.
James Quine is a St. Augustine, Florida based photographer who specializes in documentary, editorial and fine art photography. He began photographing Latin America in 1980 during a trip to several Caribbean countries to prepare photographs for a book on Spanish colonial archaeology. His personal photographs on that trip inspired a long-standing fascination with Latin-American music, language and culture. Since then, he has traveled and photographed extensively throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America and Mexico.
Quine’s images of Cuba are part a project that has been ongoing for 17 years. In that time, he has made over a dozen trips to the island and has photographed in Havana and all of Cuba’s 15 provinces. His photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the US and Cuba. They have also been widely published and represented in public and private collections. Shared Vision, a 2005 project documenting Baracoa, Cuba, for which he acted as director and participating photographer, was awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Arts Council. That same year, Quine’s work was included in the book and exhibition, Viajeros: North American Artists/Photographers’ Images of Cuba. In 2014, Quine contributed an introduction with images to a definitive book on contemporary Cuban photography, The Light In Cuban Eyes. His book, Cubanos: Photographs of Life in Cuba,

José, or Martí (as he is usually called), is a self-taught documentary and fine art photographer. In 1968 he took his first steps in photographic study under the tutelage of the master photographer Alberto Korda, who introduced him to underwater photography.

In his initial work in the field, Martí first mastered photojournalism, as a way to chronicle, question, and provide an insight of politics and the culture of Cuba. Throughout the 1970s, he extensively documented sugar cane fields and Cuban efforts to achieve the “Ten Millions [tons of sugar] Zafra”. Also, he is one of the few Cuban photographers who lived through the events of the massive “Mariel” emigration of Cubans to Miami in the early 80’s. Martí created many photos—often from a news boat—of those who left, and those who returned after an unsuccessful trip.

In 1999, Martí became an independent freelance photographer and began documenting the idiosyncrasy and culture of the Cuban people, not only in Havana, where he lives, but also deep in countryside communities. During his almost half a century behind the lens, he has also exploited commercial, landscape and portrait photography. In keeping with one of his first photographic interests, he has juried several Cuba and International underwater photography contests over the last 7 years. His black and white fine art photos (film and digital) are recognizable because of his high-contrast style.

Martí’s photographs have been included in 63 collective and 11 solo exhibitions and he has been the recipient of 14 national and international awards. His work is represented in public and private collections in the USA, Great Britain, France, Malaysia, Italy, Mexico, South Africa and Cuba.

Martí is a member of the Cuban Association of Writers and Artists, and the Fototeca de Cuba. He has collaborated with the Santa Fe Photographic programs in Cuba since 2011.

Along with James and Jose, local Cuban American writer Marisella Veiga will be signing copies of her books, We Carry Our Homes with Us: A Cuban American Memoir and Cuban Rice Classics. Her spoken word CD, Square Watermelons: 10 Essays on Living with Two Cultures will also be available.