By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com . Published
Tuesday, October 2, 2001. The Miami Herald
After a Sunday lunch of codfish with black beans and rice at Little Havana's
El Exquisito Restaurant, Lázaro Miranda clears his dishes, places a
mammoth box on the table, and issues a warning:
"My pictures are a little hard to digest.''
The Cuban photographer pauses, hesitant to open the box, and smooths his
long salt-and-pepper hair, tucked back in a pony tail.
"They are not so convenient,'' he adds. "People assume a certain
reality from an image.''
Miranda, one of Cuba's contemporary master photographers, is exhibiting his
work at downtown Miami's Wallflower Gallery -- his first show here -- 21
stunning black-and-white images that span his 10-year career roaming the island
and photographing people and their landscapes.
His is no nostalgic view.
URBAN AND RURAL
Miranda's intimate portraits of urban habaneros and countryside guajiros, of
children without toys and the elderly without hope, show a gritty reality, a
burdened people against the backdrop of a rustic landscape that defies time and
modernization.
Carts pulled by bulls. Homes with dirt floors and thatched roofs. City
dwellings where exquisite antiques share space with dilapidated walls, crumbling
roofs.
In one picture, a peasant in the remote Ciénaga de Zapata, the swampy
no-man's land in southern central Cuba, strums his guitar in his humble home. On
his windowsill, a scrawny chicken appears to have flown in for a visit. On the
peeling walls are family photographs, and as if he were one of them,
revolutionary icon Che Guevara is among them.
"This is a Cuba most people here don't want to see,'' says Miranda, 43,
who has decided to remain in the United States. "It's a critical view of
the day-to-day reality. It's the ugly side, but without manipulating reality,
and allowing people to keep their dignity despite the circumstances.''
TRADITIONAL PATH
Miranda studied art history at the University of Havana and followed the
traditional career path of young photographers who must seek membership in
official institutions to be accredited to work professionally on the island.
In 1987, Miranda became part of Grupo Contacto, a collective of
photographers and artists that grouped the top talent of the '90s generation. He
worked for the entertainment magazine Tablas until it was shut down in 1991
after the Soviet Union collapse brought widespread shortages to the Cuban
economy.
He then became a freelance photographer and traveled to remote places on the
island, producing the kind of art and documentary photography that earned
Miranda invitations to exhibit abroad. He has participated in photo exhibits in
Spain, Italy, Greece, Japan, Turkey and Argentina.
His photos have appeared in Cuba's top magazines -- Bohemia, Revolución
y Cultura, Caimán Barbudo -- and in the books One Hundred Years of
Photography in Cuba, published in Spain, and the upcoming History of Cuban
Photography being produced in Italy.
"His style is of documentary photojournalism. His work is more museum
[quality]. It's excellent work,'' says Joseph Tamargo, associate professor of
photography at Miami-Dade Community College's Wolfson Campus. "He has a
great series on guajiros, the countryside people, and it's very different from
what you would see from an outsider.''
Miranda came to the United States to participate in National Geographic
photo workshops in Washington. Now, a year later, he has decided to stay in
Miami.
PROBLEMS
"When you start to become well-known in Cuba you start having
problems,'' Miranda says. "You have to face the cultural censor who tells
you whether your work is acceptable to [the government] standards of what is
permissible.''
One of his best historical photographs, Miranda says, was confiscated by
Cuban police.
He shot the picture during a religious service at Havana's El Rincón
in 1993, a particularly harsh time on the island that preceded the rafter exodus
of 1994 and the religious opening that culminated with Pope John Paul II's visit
in 1998.
On this day, worshipers were carrying a statue of the virgin on a symbolic
round through the sanctuary where Mass was being said when they tried to break
through the doors. The practice of parading the virgin around town, common in
parishes throughout the island in pre-Castro times, had been forbidden by the
Cuban government since it cracked down on religious freedoms in the early 1960s.
The move to take the statue outside seemed an impromptu gesture, Miranda
recalls, but government agents, usually posted at these events, quickly moved to
block the doorway.
"I shot the pushing and shoving, the struggle to break through the
doors and take the virgin outside,'' Miranda says. "It was my best photo of
the day.''
The struggle was quickly quashed and the worshipers were forced to remain
inside. Miranda was detained and questioned for hours. He was released after his
credentials were verified, but his film was confiscated.
His only frame from the event is a picture taken earlier in the service. It
shows white Catholics and Afro-Cuban santería practitioners worshiping
side by side, their tired faces filled with emotion.
"When I did this work, it [religious worship] was taboo,'' Miranda
says. "Later, it was even exploited as an element of tourism. It became an
exotic thing.''
But for Miranda, the island is anything but exotic. Even his Havana skyline
is far removed from the staple postcard landscape.
In his frame, shot from across the harbor in rustic Regla, the city skyline
becomes the backdrop for a lonely child sitting on the docks.
In a picture of a group of taxi drivers at the train station, Miranda's
camera captures the metaphor of a nation in a state of waiting.
"You see the different attitudes people have toward waiting reflected
in the men's faces,'' he says. "Look at this one, he's the fighter. This
other one is depressed. And this is the happy-go-lucky rogue.''
Now Miranda is aiming his camera at Cuban Miami.
His latest photos are in color: There's the policeman on horseback smoking a
cigar and patrolling a Cultural Friday event in Little Havana. There's the
portrait of the viejita decked out in the red, white and blue of the Cuban flag
from head to toe.
Some of the images are hazy; they show movement at blurring speed.
Says Miranda: "They are just first impressions.''
Lázaro Miranda's photographs -- along with the work of Cuban
artists Juan Elesgaray, Alexander Richard, Ignacio Pérez Vásquez
and Ramón Lago -- are on exhibit through Nov. 10 at the Wallflower
Gallery, 10 NE Third St. in downtown Miami. Gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 8
p.m. Tuesdays through Friday, although there are extended hours for special
events Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. For more information, call
305-579-0069.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
