AAHH, CUBA... BEAUTIFUL ISLAND OF THE CARIBBEAN. CHERISHED AND POLISHED LIKE A TRUE PEARL. WHERE TIME SEEMS TO MOVE AT SLOWER PACE AND NOSTALGIA IS THE SAVOR OF DAILY LIFE. STUCK IN TIME, IT IS A PLACE OF DECAY AND NEVER DYING HOPE. OF POVERTY AND HAPPINESS AND UNEARTHLY BEAUTY. AND AGAINST THAT COLORFUL DECORUM, IT IS A PLACE OF TRYING AND IMPROVISATION. A PLACE OF SEARCHING FOR SOLUTIONS. A PLACE OF RESOLVIENDO.
Photography in Cuba is often an exercise in making do. And nobody knows how to make-do like Kevin Slack’s Cuban friends. More than a word,
resolviendo is a way of life in Cuba where everything is recycled, renewed, re-used, re-worked, re-purposed, re-solved and resolved, where objects and hope and lives too are extended and stretched out much longer and much farther than anyone ever intended. Out of necessity more than osmosis, Canadian photographer
Kevin Slack’s Cuban photo shoots often require some of the same resolviendo. Work with what you've got. A boy is missing? Find another one. A security guard is patrolling the entrance? Find a back door. The neighbors are watching? Keep shooting. But once in a while, as with this bedroom shoot, it all comes together quite neatly.
"I was supposed to have two photo shoots that Saturday. And originally I had been looking forward to the one that never happened more. But it's a lucky thing that it didn't work out. I had been looking for an apartment like this one for years. And a Cuban friend of mine who had recently been re-assigned to his duties of home inspection had just inspected this apartment and recommended it to me. The apartment had been earlier condemned (not by my friend); and when we went to see the apartment, the only piece of furniture that had not yet been claimed and swept away was the bed which, with some of our own resolviendo, we pieced back together for the shoot."
"And sometimes you get just the right chemistry of models. Boys that were supposed to come didn't show; and boys that weren't scheduled did. The space, the light, the bed, the boys -- ah, the boys --, they all came together. By the time we stopped for lunch – rum and beer and something that resembled calzones – by then, the boys that had been strangers were friends, sharing swigs of burning rum from the bottle and standing around in a patina of sweat and dust and baby oil, shameless and fierce in the beautiful naked glory Cuba had carved out of the raw stuff God gave them. Sometimes yes, it’s quite a lot easier than others to make do." (Kevin Slack, photographer).
With nothing more than an empty apartment, an old bed and a handful of Cuban youngsters, Kevin Slack once again succeeded in re-creating that typical Cuban sensation of nostalgia and melancholia. As no other Kevin seems to be able to place himself into that Cuban pace and mindset, giving him the opportunity to create the most magnificent portraits or the most beautiful, most natural and most masculine men Havana has to offer. –B-
Kevin Slack is one of the participants to BeautifulVision, the Men of Beautifulmag.eu, BeautifulMag's first anthology photobook.
KEVIN SLACK | BEAUTIFULMAG
