UA professor and photographer opens exhibit in Cuba
Published: May 10, 2009
University of Alabama professor and well-known photographer Chip Cooper is debuting a special collection of photos that captures Cuba just before what many expect will be a period of tremedous change.
He worked with a Cuban photographer Nestor Marti to record all that Havana is now.
Their exhibition, called “Side by Side,“ just opened in Havana.
Below is an interview with Cooper as well as some examples from his exhibit.
JH: How did this project come about?
CC: This project started in may 2008, with Dr. Leal, a Havana Historian. He’s the man in charge of rebuilding old Havana. He asked Dean Bob Olin of the University of Alabama’s College of Arts and Sciences to send me down to work with one of Cuba´s great phtographers, Nestor Marti.
JH: Exploring Cuba must have been an incredible experience. What are some of your most vivid impressions?
CC: The people are incredible. They have a strong sense of survival and the ability to know needs verses wants. I am totally in love with this country. I will take back more than I bring, a sense of living today no matter what.
JH: You have captured Cuba just before what will likely be a time of huge change for Havana. Your work will likely preserve a time that most Americans will never know existed. That must be a special, significant feeling, as a professional?
CC: There is a change in the air of promise and change. I feel it everywhere and to be here at this time is a life experience.
JH: Do you have a favorite picture? If so, which one and why?
CC: All photos are important because, at the time I shoot them, the moment is incredibly special. I like them all!
JH: Relationships with Cuba are politically controversial, but you feel like this partnership between the University of Alabama and Cuna is extremely helpful to the University. Explain that dynamic and the benefits.
CC: This relationship helps bring understanding between our two countries. Hopefully we won’t continue to have a controversial relationship, but instead an understanding between us both that is very necessary in the 21st century.
University of Alabama Press Release:
A joint U.S.-Cuban photographic exhibition featuring some 90 images
capturing the “beauty and grace” of the Cuban people is scheduled to open
May 6 in the Julio Larramendi Gallery in the Hostal Del Habana in Havana,
Cuba.
The exhibition, titled “Side by Side,“ features the photography of The
University of Alabama’s Chip Cooper and the city of Havana’s Néstor Martí.
It will run through June 17 in Cuba and is scheduled to open on The
University of Alabama campus in fall 2009.
Cooper is among the University faculty working with 11 UA
undergraduate students spending more than three months in Cuba studying that
country’s culture and other subjects at the University of Havana.
Cooper, a UA graduate, served as UA’s director of photography for 33
years and is now a faculty member in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences and
an artist-in residence in the Honors College.
Martí, a University of Havana graduate, is a photographer in the
Office of the Historian of the city of Havana. He covered the IX and Xi
Ibero-American Summits, visits to the Historic District by dignitaries,
heads of state, and cultural and political personalities.
Cooper said he hopes the projects will grow into a book-length
photographic publication and an opportunity for Nestor to travel to the UA
campus and take photographs of Alabama’s rural communities and UA’s growing
campus.
The project is a part of the UA Cuba Initiative, which provides
opportunities for UA students to pursue their education under a special
academic license granted by the U.S. government. Since 2002, UA has received
academic travel licenses from the U.S. Department of the Treasury which
permits travel to Cuba for specific academic activities.
The exhibit is dedicated to Raymundo Leonardo Respal Fina, director
of the Experimental Graphic Studio in Cuba and a strong supporter of the
Alabama-Cuba Initiative.
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