The House of the Red Slabs

Havana, Cerro, Magnolia # 9. A child observes, and thinks and feels. The golden color of the morning sun that mixes with the red of the floor tiles of that house on Magnolia Street. The gray of the sidewalks and the noise of passing cars. Suchel with its constant smell of industry and soot. The proclamation, that characteristic sound of scissor sharpeners, today is reproduced by large horns, where they let you know that “El Pan” is coming. The neighbor who wakes up with a “Radio Reloj” and listens to time go by, just like in this house, time has passed and yet it feels like home, although the absence is even greater and more visible. Pieces of my personal history are scattered in the corners and on its streets. The child, no longer so child, observes, thinks and feels.

The House of the Red Tiles is a personal project, where I enter the space-time of the place where I grew up. Just outside the Walls of Havana, a place called El Canal. In this house with its red flagstones, I lived the first 24 years of my life and there I began to photograph.

One day in November I left my house bound for Miami like hundreds of other Cubans. Far from my country and with the experience gained, I have realized that photographically, Cuba and especially Havana, have become a photographic spot for foreign photographers hungry for images, taking with them an accumulation of prefabricated images, full of clichés. Turning Cuba into a theater for photography tours. Seeing myself dissatisfied with this reality and the personal demand to be sincere with my photography, I started this project, I discovered that there is no better place for my photography than my house, where I grew up. I explore the common places of my childhood, I get lost in spaces and personal memories.

To return and portray these streets and their people is to find in an image my friends, neighbors and family and their memories in me. Color is a fundamental piece, it is the first memory of the child self, thus being another character within the images. The House of Red Slabs is an introspective portrait within that space where my past, present and future come together.