subscribeTrinidad Cuba, Photography by Jill Sabella
by Nancy Cantwell
There are photographs in my collection that hang quietly and whose content I assume sympathetic to solitude. My relationship is one of a casual hallway passer-by. We coexist comfortably outside of any grand narrative that provokes reactions such as Atget’s, Chesnut Seller, that sits above my computer and whose story seems to go on and on. But now as the light is starting to change dramatically, my attention is once again captured, held in a discrete dialog with the Cuban Woman.
Cuban Woman (2000), is by photographer Jill Sabella. Taken with a Holga camera, whose reputation is that of a toy, but in the hands of one as accomplished as Jill becomes tool of precision. Taking advantage of the variants created by the single-piece plastic meniscus lens, Jill deliberates on the intimate connection to the subject that the humble camera allows. That intimate association is further vested in each photograph as they are first printed on matt paper, sepia toned and finally hand painted using oil paints and pencils. All implements and processes focus the viewer on a moment redolent with history.
Cuban Woman was shot in Trinidad, Cuba, a quiet colonial town known for its tobacco, cobbled streets, wrought iron work and pastel colored buildings. Founded in 1514, Trinidad, together with the near by Valle de los Ingenios, has been classified as a World Heritage Site since 1988 by UNESCO. As frozen in time this portrait of colonization might seem, it is germane to the time stamp of this particular photo to note the circumstances of relations between the U.S. and Cuba in April 2000.
The gravity of 9.11 and the subsequent prevalence of widespread political tension sometimes make hard to imagine world crisis pre-September 2001, but in the spring of 2000 there was on the world stage a heated political drama involving the young Cuban boy Elián Gonzalez. Elián had left Cuba in November 1999 for the U.S., along with his mother and 12 others in a small motor boat. Elián’s mother and ten others did not survive the trip, but the 6 year old boy, whose inner tube had floated him to safety, managed to make it to Miami. His case was the center of hotly debated immigration policies of the U.S. with concerns to Cuban emigrates (as opposed to other Caribbean nations, notably that of Haiti). On April 20th, 2000, after much tension and legal battles Janet Reno, then Attorney General, ordered the boy be forcibly removed from the home of his Miami relatives and returned to the custody of his father, Juan Miguel González Quintana, in Cuba.
It seems no wonder that the election debacles of 2000 that beleaguered the U.S. somehow landed in the hands of the Miami-Dade County electorate and Florida Supreme Court. Extrapolate from there the next eight years. So I am reminded this spring as I spend time with this deceptively tranquil photograph of colonial Cuba. The internal dialog of this work may not be a narrative knock out, but the mastery of execution coupled with its provenance makes it a potent image meditate on.
