Project Statement

Throughout history, monuments have functioned as showcases of our highest aspirations, but also as tools for sustaining narratives of power. That's why it's no surprise when they fall as ideas change or the political edifice that upheld them cracks. With José Martí, however, the Cuban community has experienced a different dynamic. Despite the deep differences between two political and ideological extremes, Martí has been venerated, reinterpreted, and elevated as a symbol within the Cuban imaginary. After his death, his figure and thought became cemented in the spiritual and cultural memory of the nation.

Martí is Cuba.

"Apostle of Cuba's independence, guide of the American peoples, and champion of human dignity, born in Havana on January 28, 1853."

So reads the text inscribed upon the marble pedestal that honors him. Above it, his equestrian sculpture, his figure caught in an eternal fall, reminds every Cuban of his sacrifice on that fateful day when he fell dead at Dos Ríos. His monument south of Central Park has become a site of pilgrimage and devotion for the Cuban community, the most important statue to the memory and legacy of José Martí outside of Cuba.

As a Cuban emigrant in the United States, in search of a possible Cuba, I have found myself, again and again, face to face with Martí. His busts, scattered throughout the country, become small sanctuaries of cubanía, connected across the North American map like an emotional GPS that orients us and reminds us who we are and where we come from; Martí as our ideal portrait, Martí as aspiration. And it is precisely that insistence — that even in the midst of rupture, we continue to invoke and claim Martí as part of our legacy — that gives this photographic project its purpose: to find a common ground from which Cubans can recognize and speak to one another, a symbolic space where what is shared outweighs what divides us. Essential for imagining any reconstruction of tomorrow.

Legacy in Stone is a photographic documentation of the Cuban presence in the United States through the monuments dedicated to José Martí, portraits made through the eyes of a Cuban emigrant, for whom these sculptures have become a way of rediscovering fragments of a country. Since 2017 I have photographed 77 busts and statues across eleven states, traveling more than 14,000 miles to record these sites. The images have been made entirely on analog film, using black and white medium format film. This choice allows me to give visual coherence to the body of photographs while avoiding distractions that might pull the gaze away from the bust itself, so that form, light, and texture remain at the center of the dialogue with the image. This slow process allowed me to observe each setting more deliberately and reflectively, to establish a close dialogue with each image, and to connect with the memory and presence of Martí in every place I photographed.