This French photographer was taken with the habitants of this small Cuban village, famous for its valley and cave. The result is a series of black and white portraits, the photographer likes to tell anecdotes about them.
Manuel Sixto, known as “El Niño”, comes out of a thicket. He returns from the dusty field where he slaved away his entire life as a farm worker. Yasmani and Yasiel accompany him. They voluntarily pose for me.
It’s my first photograph in Viñales, a large village in West Cuba, made up of tobacco, horseback riding, hardships, and ingenuity, like any other place on the island, but with a dose of frank rurality.
It’s the beginning of a long story fraught with encounters and reunions, filled with emotion that feeds my photography, over the course of eight successful trips.
That’s how I find Yasmani, pejoratively dubbed “El tuerca”, seven years later, proudly perched on his mount, like this resilient cowboy.
Gustavo, known as “Tavo”, welcomes me into his small house to have me taste a puro, a cigar he made himself. His brother Roberto loves all the music from his country. He introduces me the to the rumba and its sound, the mambo and the cha cha cha by having me listen to his dusty LPs.
Eloïna’s cottage is filled with portraits of her two children, Lionel and Ivis, both killed at the age of twenty in road accidents. This double tragedy does not leave her. She abandons herself to the pain as soon as she sees me again.
A slow stroll from house to house, from field to church – not to forget the Sunday cockfights, hidden in the hollow of the neighboring mogotes – gives me these tender moments that open the eyes and the heart. In the best of cases, photography will happen in a reciprocal desire to keep a warm trace, in our family album.
Jean-Jacques Moles
Jean-Jacques Moles is a French photographer who lives and works in Maubec. He is a former specialized teacher at Beaumont, and a travel lover.
