Midday Cowboy

I’ve spent the last month trying to put my finger on what exactly made Cuba so bewitching to me as a photographer.  All I’ve been able to come up with so far is that the mix of colors as well as the mix of styles is absolutely unique, and the mix of the mix, if you will, is alluring as can be.  The buildings, cars and people all have a certain “je ne sais quoi,” and when you put them all together they form a gestalt, which simply means that the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

This image is a great example.  It’s just “a man standing next to his car parked on a busy street in Havana.”  The description sounds pretty mundane.  And yet the color and styling of the green car, and the man standing in front of it wearing bright yellow shorts AND a yellow shirt AND a cowboy hat, and even his posture, the way he’s standing with his hip thrust out and his arm casually leaning on the open door of the car…it all adds up to something unique, and uniquely Cuban at that.