Taking Photos: A Hobby or a Calling?
Discovering photography at the age of 25 was a true blessing. My friend Odette Fernández gave me the opportunity of using her point-and-shoot as we both ventured the streets of Havana while working at an IT university as English teachers. For some reason, the new “hobby” started becoming a passion for both of us—even though we ended up taking different paths within the craft.
Alamar’s abandoned amphitheater. Eastern Havana, Cuba.|Credit: Reynaldo Cruz Diaz
With time, I used the very few skills I had learned on my own to work as a photojournalist for ¡AHORA! my province’s local newspaper. It took a lot of nerve to be willing to do journalistic coverage with zero knowledge of photography techniques and with nothing but a defective point-and-shoot Samsung pocket camera. My only “classes” had been through foreign magazines like National Geographic, whose incredible photographs inspired much of my documentary work.
Even during my first steps, I would enjoy the possibility of shooting things that were not related to my job assignments or with family and friends. The more I did it, the more I felt compelled to do it.
The Cuban flag seems caged behind these white bars. Photo taken with the Samsung KENOX S760.|Credit: Reynaldo Cruz Diaz
It started as a hobby. Little by little, the camera started capturing the surroundings of what my eye was seeing. Sometimes a good and well-composed photo, sometimes a sloppy one, sometimes bad exposure due to the lack of knowledge and the camera I had… until I took two days out of a five-day course with local media photographer Amauris Betancourt.
Although I missed more than half the workshop, I got my first contact with the rules of composition, the possibility of using manual mode, and the existence of ISO, which until that moment I had known NOTHING about. After that, I became a rule-of-the-thirds maniac, trying to apply every single rule of photography to the point that my once decent photos turned into a mess for a few days.
Shark-gutting in Cojímar. Eastern Havana, Cuba.|Credit: Reynaldo Cruz Diaz
It took me time and a lot of trial and error to understand that the many rules of photography composition are meant to be broken at times. As a matter of fact, once you truly learn them, the ability to put them in practice comes on its own. It was a little later that I realized that the hobby was gone, or that the hobby had turned into something else.
Hobby Becomes Calling
My time with I Love Cuba Photo Tours came, and with it, some of the most hectic and fun years of my life. I had turned my hobby into a source of income, but not any source of income: one that allowed me to make in two or three days more money than my yearly salary in my previous job (in which I had been paid by the government). The best part of it all was that I was doing it while having fun. Except from the very rare bad clients that we ran into, every day of work felt like a vacation or hanging out with new friends.
Cuba is possibly one of the biggest pieces of evidence that the use of the term “developing nation” is nothing but a euphemism. Just imagine a professional athlete, making tens of millions of dollars for doing nothing but nurture and perfect their hobby, but make such hobby less lucrative. Then, put it in a context where it falls way below the minimum wage in America, even though it is a high income in Cuba.
It is striking that I opened my eyes to the reality of the nation at the “tender” age of 34. See, while working for the newspaper, you knew there were images that you shouldn’t even bother submitting because they were most likely not going to be published. Everything that print media takes out needs full approval from the corresponding Communist Party ideologist, who would veto the publication of local or national newspaper.
For a time—too long of a time, I would say—I had the idea (injected to me by “leaders” during countless hours of meetings) that the reason to keep those poignant pictures and news from reaching the public was to prevent manipulation. Using the US pressures as an excuse to apply censorship, the Cuban government quells any attempt to publish photos that might make the leaders of the Revolution look bad.
Perhaps one of the biggest moments for me was when I photographed young military men heading to offer relief after a hurricane. My photo—the one I wanted them to publish—showed them from an upward view, standing at ease, backpacks to their sides, taken from the back of the line. My superiors refused to publish it because they said “They look like they are turning their backs on the problem.” That photo ended up being the cover of my DOCU Magazine Special Edition.
Oxen and cart in Limoncito. Báguano, Holguín, Cuba.|Credit: Reynaldo Cruz Diaz
It was precisely my life in Havana what actually evolved my photography. At first with caution—mainly because of how the police likes to interact with Cubans with cameras—, and then with more resolve, I started shooting those things that would not have been published my my former employer, but which would be appreciated by the outside world.
Keeping the Calling Alive
Decay, hope/hopelessness, struggles, and sad people all became subjects of my pictures. The hobby in itself had turned into something more profound. I was no longer taking pictures for the joy of it. Instead, I wanted to capture reality, make sure those stories didn’t go untold.
One thing I did learn from my time in Cuba’s government-run media, though, is that one must capture the truth. You may not like what you see, you may not like the people you photograph, you may not agree with the philosophical meaning of what you are witnessing, but it is your morel duty as a lens professional to make sure some people see what you saw. Although they tried to teach me to do the exact opposite (in order to “protect the dignity and integrity of the leaders of the Revolution”), I decided to learn my own way, to look through an uncensored eye.
Nevertheless, I would be a hypocrite if I said I did not learn a lot from that media outlet experience. It was a life-changing job, and taught me more lessons about life than it did about journalism or photography.
If someone were to ask me what my biggest regret regarding photography is, I would probably answer with an ambiguous and bittersweet statement. I regret not finding out in time about the protests that took place on July 11, 2021, and I also regret not having come out to photograph them.
However, I also know that if I had done it, I would not be writing these lines. Instead, I would be rotting in a prison in Cuba charged with “public disorder”. Those last few weeks between the date and my final departure became endless. My caution and concern for my own safety led me to do what I hadn’t done in seven years—with the exception of the first stages of Covid-19—which was to leave my camera at home.
Upon my departure, I continued documenting everything I could, first in Mexico and later in the United States. It has less to do with the pleasure of pressing the shutter, and everything to do with the possibility of capturing stories.
More than artists, documentary photographers serve as vessels to carry a message witnessed by a few and transmit it to many. Once we understand that, we become one with the camera, and we do not hesitate.
Final Thoughts
Although most of the things I have managed to photograph since I came to the US have been mostly positive stories, I have had some photos that indeed put up a thought. A pair of protests (in Hartford and Avon), a Worker Pickup Area in Stamford, have been some of my captures showing stories worth checking into. The many abandoned places that my lens captures every other day also make me reminisce about my time in Cuba.
Carrying the camera along all the time is without question something that helps me be ready to document. Nevertheless, feeling that more as a duty than as a way top have fun and do what I love is what in my opinion makes the difference.
If National Geographic sparked my curiosity, I gave to say that Magnum Photos did the job in terms of making me fall in love with documenting street life. Being in the United States, a land of freedom of speech, opens a whole new creative door for me. I will carry out my moral duty as a photographer to capture reality, to the best of my ability.
