From Cuba with Love
Let's all Share The Love ♥
From Cuba With Love
by Evelyn Sosa
Today we are bringing you Love from Havana, Cuba. In Evelyn Sosa’s own words, the situation in Cuba is extremely difficult as the outbreak combines with food shortages resulting in long lines and scarce supply. But Evelyn still wants to give, share the Love ♥
The Malecon is so empty…
How are things in Havana Evelyn?
In Havana things are apparently calm, but not in the minds of the people or the lines for food. The main fear of Cuban people is not the Coronavirus, it is the hunger. The number of cases is growing and death too. Until now it looks like the government has it under control. It is supposed to peak in the second week of May.
My neighborhood was declared as a “Quarantine red zone”. People can move only for essential errands and face masks are mandatory.
We have to make our own masks. Many women have taken to sow masks. My aunt is one of them. She sews masks for everyone in needs. Other people offer fabric for the masks.
Sewing masks for people in need
How does the situation affect your everyday life?
I temporarily moved to another part of the city to be near my mother and brother. With my four cats, moving is always stressful!!.
All my projects are on pause but I still keep shooting in the streets, documenting coronavirus in Havana. I ride my bicycle for hours to go around as public transportation has been suspended.
I decided to start a new body of work called Portraits in Times of Coronavirus. I want to take more intimate pictures.
Lachiquitina is the cutest
I found her in the street after her mother died, just days after she was born
Can you tell us more about your feelings?
Sometimes I feel my whole life is on pause. I’m waiting. I don’t know what I am waiting for, but I feel that I am waiting.
I cannot concentrate. I cannot focus on one thing for more than a few minutes. The feeling is similar to when I stopped smoking.
The sadness is immense every time I read the news and see the situation in general, the suffering, the deaths. I now realize that I have no more fear of the virus. I am waiting for the fear to come back as I think it is better to be afraid.
I also launched a call for people to share their experience of isolation through photography. During a month I published the photos in @neutral_room an Instagram platform dedicated to Cuban Photography that I founded in 2019. The results were very amazing. Go check it out. I am thinking of launching a second call soon.
Finally, how does all that influence your Art practice?
I miss shooting my regular portraits, my intimate portraits a lot. Of course with social distancing it is all but impossible! I miss looking in people’s eyes. I am usually very close to my subjects sometimes inside their intimate space. That is something that has to wait. Many projects have to wait.
I think this situation will possibly make me work in different ways. I do many types of photography but I know I need the portraits to be content. Portrait is what I want to do and that is what I am going to do. Perhaps I have to change, things like lenses or distance. Maybe the results will be very interesting and new. I don´t know. Time will tell.
I miss shooting intimate portraits
SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF CUBA
To support our friends in Cuba, and until May 31st, Uncommon Beauty will forfeit most of its share in any sale of Evelyn’s limited edition photos in our shop and send to Evelyn 80% of all net proceeds. Now is the time to show support through buying Evelyn’s art.
“As I wrote in my foreword to HAVANA INTIMATE, Evelyn has a “big heart and shoots with her heart as much as with her camera.” We trust Evelyn is in the best position to help those in most needs around her.
This highlights that many of us are privileged to just feel bored because of the Stay at Home orders. Our thoughts and heart are with Evelyn, her family, her friends and the cuban people who stoically hold on in every way they can during these terribly difficult times.”
On any other art sale, also until May 31st, Uncommon Beauty will continue to donate 20% of the net proceeds to the First Responder Children’s Fondation, COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund.
From New York and Los Angeles, From Berlin and Madrid, all the way to Havana, let's all Share The Love ♥
Thank you,
Jean-Noël & the Uncommon Beauty team