Monday, May 15, 2017

CUBISMO- An Interview with photographer and historian Jonathan Hansen



The first duty of a man is to think for himself” ― José Martí 


The ink with which the history of Castro’s Cuba is being written is still damp. In such situations the role of an historian requires a delicate balance of distance and intimacy, dispassion and care. In this interview, Harvard historian Jonathan Hansen gives us insight into how he works to balance these seemingly unresolvable complexities. Most interesting is how he, as a “Yankee,” has been able to gain access to previously unavailable archives and hear first hand accounts of events from historic personalities.



Hansen has made dozens of trips to Cuba and these are more than peripatetic wanderings. Careful, patient and insistent, Hansen is bringing forward an important history of the Cuban people, it’s enigmatic and complex leader Fidel Castro, and the elaborate and sometimes tragic relationship between Cuba and the Unites States.


These same qualities that Hansen brings to his work as an historian are present in his photography which is now on display at the Carversville Grocery. Culled from hours of wandering and seeing, these photographs are born of respect for the subject matter and penetrate beyond the superficial. Evoking such modernists as Paul Klee and Georges Braques these foreshortened images of cityscapes are perplexities of time, space, and color.


Hansen comes by his gifts of cultural appreciation, creativity and sense of adventure quite honestly. His parents Alix and Chris Hansen of Solebury, shared a life dedicated to public health service. In the 60s his parents took their young family in tow as they went to serve in such diverse communities such as the Mississippi Delta during the Civil Rights era, the Navajo Nation, and in distant lands such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Hansen’s maternal great grandmother, Bertha Carson Day, was both a patron of the arts and an artist having studied with American illustrator Howard Pyle. Her daughter, Bertha Cole, also a resident of Solebury, was a fine artist in her own right. Hansen’s photographs of Cuba will be on exhibit at his brother Max Hansen’s Carversville Grocery through the end of January. Enjoy this interview with Bucks County native son, historian and photographer Jonathan Hansen.


Philip Stephano: Instead of a straightforward interview I thought we would kind of treat this like wandering through the streets...


Jonathan Hansen: Did you see those three photos I sent to you this a.m.?


JH: The reason I suggested those is they were the first ones that struck me as original, as making a contribution to "seeing" Cuba in a new way, which is one measure of the meaning of “art.” In the last three years or so, I’ve been down to Cuba 15 or 20 times, making connections, meeting people, working in the archives. Cuban archives tend to close around 4pm or so, leaving me several hours to explore Havana before supper time. I’m a historian, not a technically trained photographer. I go to Cuba with two hats, sometimes as a lecturer on Harvard’s dime, more often as a historian on an academic's nickel. With Harvard I stay in one or two of the nicest hotels in the city; by myself I stay in one of my favorite “casas” (from “casa particular,” or private house), which resemble our bed and breakfasts. My hotels are located at or near Parque Central in heart of tourist Havana; my casas are located between Parque Central and Havana University, off Calle Neptuno, in the heart of densely populated central Havana, a veritable urban cauldron.




One day, on the terrace of my hotel, I was curious to know if I could locate my casa, or at least a nearby street, with my telephoto lens. I took a series of shots with various degrees of magnification. Later, playing with these files, I began to grab and compare various pieces of the bigger images, discovering to my surprise a felicitous effect: sometimes a kind of painterly sfumato, sometimes an exaggerated pixilation that emphasized the simultaneous architectural and sedimentary nature of the city’s decaying buildings. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “this is kind of cool. The rest, as we historians like to say, is photography (or, at least, so people say.


I liked the abstraction and impressionism, and I loved the colors. I repeated this exercise at different hours of the day, different seasons of the year, sometimes in blazing sun, sometimes at dusk, which accounts for the different effects and colors of the different photographs. Again, I really liked the abstraction, with some of the images calling to mind Paul Klee, some Georges Braque, some Picasso, and so on. Others see similarities to other cubists and even abstract expressionists.

TECHNIQUE

JH: For the record, I touch up the color, as any photographer does, but try not to over do it. I aim to depict a realistic Havana, not an overly fantastical or romanticized Havana. I'm occasionally playing with color but, to some people’s surprise, never brush over the images. You can do that with fancy computer programs, but I’m not doing that. Some of the images have a pointillist effect which I also find cool and appropriate given the subject matter. I'm using two good but simple cameras, a Sony RX 100 and the Sony for idiots with telescopic lens. When I first went to Cuba I went into a good camera store in Boston and asked what sort of camera a real photographer would take if they couldn’t carry their own equipment. Everyone in the store agreed: the new small Sonys. I wanted small because I didn’t want the people in the streets to think of me as a photographer, as that attracts a lot of attention in Havana and throughout Cuba. I want them to think of me as just another "Yankee" checking out the town.

SEDIMENTARY LAYERS

JH: As someone walking around with a camera in hand, what interests me most about the city is its sedimentary quality. All cities, of course, have sedimentary layers but what distinguishes Havana from ancient Rome or ancient Athens is the fact that it’s in a constant state of radical decay. It’s actually very sad. The decay exposes the city’s layers. It’s tantalizing, as the erosion and decay reveal hints of former uses, owners, institutions, and so on. It is as if someone is taking a hammer and pulling layer after layer of stucco away. Underfunded city officials are in a (losing) struggle with mother nature and human neglect to save, renovate, and resurrect the city’s architectural gems, just as the Cuban government is in a race to develop an economy capable of employing and retaining its astounding human capital.


PS: But you’re not just taking photos of buildings.



JH: Right. Walk around any city or neighborhood or town long enough, and you’ll find people doing interesting things or revealed in interesting ways. One of the places that attracts every visitor to Havana is the Malecón, the broad seafront that runs from Old Havana through Vedado to the border of Miramar. For much of the year the sun sets off the Malecón, and like sunsets everywhere Havana’s are beautiful. On my trips to Havana I end up there virtually every night. I have the luxury of time, and am able to simply hang out and watch the fisherman casting their rods, couples embracing, solitary folks mediating on the sea. Wait in any place long enough with beautiful scenery and interesting people and photographs will suggest themselves. I’m particularly drawn to the fisherman, who are there every evening trying to catch a fish or two to take home for dinner or sell to the local restaurants in order to earn a little money. I know the fisherman, the fisherman know me. Some of my favorite shots of the these guys.

PS:I love this because it actually feels like you are fishing. You are sitting there waiting for whatever it is…. that tug.

JH: That's exactly right. I have tons of time. And I wait for the right opportunity. Often that opportunity never comes. I have hundred and hundreds of photos of no interest whatsoever. You know the one of the jazz player?


PS: That is the most amazing photograph.

JH: Don’t you love that? Max thinks he looks like Malcolm X. Max is right.

PS: Totally. That is one of the most evocative photos I've seen in a long time.

JH: That guy sits right across from every tourist in Havana. Go out to the Malecon. Put your back to the sea (and to Florida which is 90 miles directly behind you. You’ll be facing a city front of beautiful buildings, many of them now decayed, that look over the Malecón to the Florida Straits. These buildings get walloped by wind and waves. Even in a good economy you’d be re-stuccoing these buildings every year. The saxophonist sits in the opening of one of these decaying buildings. On a recent visit, I saw him there every evening for fifteen straight days. I have photos of him talking to friends, sometimes playing music with friends. I have photos of him alone. I have photos of him standing. I have photos of kids running and playing soccer in that little space. Then one day I looked over and saw him in a new light. I took a couple of shots. That’s the story of that picture.

Any good or amateur photographer might have captured that image. But it wasn’t coincidence that found me there. I go back there all the time. I've taken his picture a lot and this one worked. So a little persistence seems to pay off. Did you see the photo with the little girl behind the fence with the pink nails?





She is on my street (when I am staying in the heart of the city). I walk down that street several times a day. I ask permission to take shots, or, when people aren’t looking, I shoot away, taking care not to capture faces without permission--a rule I learned at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay.



JH: One of my favorite images is of a woman I’ve named "Rapunzle." There is another one of a beautiful black man, a laborer. He's fixing a building that was put together with sticks and stucco. I kid you not. That was in Santiago de Cuba. Most of them are from Havana but I’ve been all over. I have beautiful shots of the countryside, though most are simply snapshots that don’t qualify as art. Most of my photographs don’t qualify as art. But I agree with you about the saxman, in a humble way, I think once in a while.... (laughing), I've created art in some those photos. I'm thrilled by that and by people’s response; this is total serendipity.

PS :That is one of the things I like to ask of people who are creating and exploring: what role does accident play in the process of finding whatever that image is that speaks to you.






JH: If I may repeat myself, I went out to take photos of a place that I was coming to know and love, right? I wanted to connect these two places I stayed at. In doing that I did a close cropping of this big file and then I thought ,"I don't think I can see my street!" (laughing) . What you have in these big images, especially the real big blue one that actually has two figures in it. You can see the collapsed (foreshortened) streets.




We're talking 20 or 30 blocks collapsed into the photographs. And I thought, "Jesus, this is pretty cool," and to my complete surprise it reminded me of Braque and Klee and all these early modernists. I showed them to artist friends who love that genre and one Brazilian friend said, "I've got to have that. You've done something really interesting here." So, yes, a complete surprise!

You ask what serendipity has to do with this? Everything. An historian goes to Cuba digging around the Castro archives, surprised to even get access there. Eventually to meet Castro (perhaps)? I haven’t met him yet. Everyone who knows him [Castro] says, “oh my God, you’re going to get that knock or call any day now. The thing is he’s older than he used to be. He used to love encounters with writers, when someone would come down. I have these great quotes that I show the gatekeepers of his archives where he says, “Anyone who is writing a biography of me who doesn’t come to see me is irresponsible.” I always include that quote when requesting access to his archives or an interview. If the book comes out before he dies, I expect to meet him. Right now, I’m reluctant to use my limited capital to force the matter. I’ve met some of his sisters and many of his friends.
Young Fidel Castro

To be honest, I didn't think they would by buy my idea for this book. I've gotten unprecedented and absolutely unbelievable support from the Cuban government and from many former friends and associates. Right now I'm writing a chapter about a friendship (and brief romance) that he had with a woman named Naty Revuelta. When he was in jail in 1953-5, they exchanged many letters. Natty shared them with me the year before she died. Most have not been published, none have been historicized (put in historical context). Natty was a remarkable person who elicited from him stunning commentary on art, philosophy, literature and so on. You wouldn’t believe it. In one letter Castro compares Kant’s epistemology to Einstein’s, making astute judgements about both. If you want to hear more about this, you’ll have to read my book! The letters comprise a small sample of the rich material I’m now writing about.
Natalia "Naty" Revuelta

PS: Tell us some more about Naty Revuelta.


JH: [Naty Revuelta] died late last February. I had come to know her well in Havana. For some reason, she and I hit it off. She liked my project and read (and edited) it very carefully. I would visit her every time I went to Havana. She told me a lot about the letters. I asked if I might see some. She said maybe. On one trip, she said, she’d like to share the letter with me. When I got to her house, she was reluctant, and I said, “OK, Natty, let me show you a few letters I have from Fidel to others that I just got this morning in the archive.” She read a few of them, remarking, “That’s so Fidel. That’s so Fidel.” Then she got up saying, “wait here.” She came back and dropped the letters in my lap.

THE PROJECT


PS: How did you get the Cubans to sign off on the project?

JH: Very gradually. I overwhelmed them with enthusiasm and persistence. They believe the project has value. I said to them: “Look in the United States, we have treated Castro like prosecutors rather than historians, reaching back selectively in history to find evidence to convict the man we don’t like. That leads to bad history and bad biography. People don’t live their lives going backwards; Castro didn’t grow up wondering when he would become a communist! I wanted to recreate his life in all its complexity, to capture a rounded Castro, a real human. My goal is not to defend Castro, or to indict him. I’m hoping to understand him and the choices and decisions he made.


The project comes at a good time, obviously, in U.S.-Cuban relations, but also for Cuba itself, which is now revisiting the Revolution and asking itself what might this Revolution have become in a different context? in a non bi-polar world/Cold War world?

PS: Let’s move on to some personal things. I know your history, that you have a strong background in art and aesthetics just because you grew up around it. You grew up in Bucks County but your parents and grandparents travelled extensively around the world. Can you say a word or two about your upbringing and how it has influenced your walking and your seeing.

JH: There's no question that culturally distinct places fascinate me. Especially ones that are thought to be a little bit forbidden. Through my wife, Anne, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital in Boston, we recently spent a lot of time in Rwanda, where she was helping to introduce a neonatal protocol for the whole country. We fell in love with the place. This is a country twenty years or so post-genocide. Now it is very safe, if complicated because it has an authoritarian figure who is doing truly amazing things in terms of health care, gender equity, education, internet access, and economic growth and development, bringing a million people out of poverty in less time than has ever been done before….

PS: So what is it about your upbringing?

JH: Right, sorry, Rwanda distracts me. When I go to such places... when I'm in Havana or in Rwanda, I feel ALIVE. That's simply a fact. I feel like my synapses are firing. In some ways I feel at home in such places. I like making connections across culture, language and economics. For some reason, this comes naturally, despite my being a blond haired blue eyed devil, as Malcolm X like to put it. This may be an inheritance from my dad, but my mother must be credited, too. I feel like I'm really living life in these encounters, as in nowhere else--making intimate connection across/despite historical bad faith. I also like interpreting such places to others via my work.

This is what I did in Guantanamo (Guantánamo: An American History, 2011). Here's this place called Guantanamo that people thought was only bad, or only good. As I said about Castro, I'm interested in capturing the complexity of such people and places. I guess I have inherited this from the family. To reveal Cuba in a complex way just excites me more than anything else. I have the idea of writing my next book about Paul Kagame (Rwandan President) because as I say he is both loved and reviled but little understood.

But yeah, my love, my passion for Cuba and the friends I've made there I definitely think of building on the foundation of comfort in unfamiliar places that I got from my dad and my family traveling all over the place.


PS: That's beautiful. One last question and it does have to do with the similar topic of translating yourself to other people and even to culture. What was your first joke in Cuban Spanish.

JH: I'm not going to be able to help you (laughing). It's the errors I make that they laugh at that I twist and pretend that they were intentional....I can't even think of them. My jokes come out with people. I spend this whole time at that archive, for instance, where people are only talking to me in Spanish...So it is not so much clever lingual jokes, jokes of the tongue or language as the force of my personality. I’m a self-deprecating American; there are a lot of these on this side of the Florida Straits, but they tend to forget that. I approach Cubans with what I call the three "Rs": respect, reciprocity and recognition. That along with affection, self-deprecation, and candor makes it's is hard to say "no" given my persistence. “Oh c'mon,” I told them, “this project is important! We've got to get Castro right.”

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