Absolute Cuba
by Raul Canibano
Edition Lammerhuber
£60

THIS is a fabulous album, and I don’t use superlatives lightly. With his images, Cuban photographer Raul Canibano is not attempting to give us a message, political or otherwise, but captures the exuberance of Cuba as no other photographer has done to date. Even though the images are all in black and white you can’t help but feel the heat and strength of the sunlight bouncing off the images.

In his introductory and illuminating text, the Cuban journalist and novelist Leonardo Padura Fuentes writes that Absolut Cuba is “Raul Canibano‘s declaration of love for his native country. His surprising, caring, yet incredibly precise, take and his lightning-fast, instinctive and gripping intellect let him capture moments that might seem totally familiar: normal everyday life in urban or rural settings. This makes him one of the most gifted photographers in Latin America.”

Canibano was born in Havana in 1961 and worked as a welder. He had no artistic training, but got himself a camera at precisely the time when life in Cuba was hardest – in the 1990s, when the island was left to its own devices after the collapse of socialism in Europe and descended into poverty and even extreme destitution.