Hurricane Irma Aftermath
When studying photography in college I wrote an essay about the differences between black & white and colour in landscape photography. The crux of my thesis was how black & white photography made nearly everything look good because, by it’s very nature, it viewed the world differently to what we’re used to. To demonstrate I compared the black & white landscapes of Yosemite National Park by Ansel Adams, with my own colour photograph of the tops of pine trees and the moon (taken in the afternoon), captured in Stoke Park Woods. Adams’s photos were considered better, I argued, only because the monochrome leant it a grandeur that colour could not. The only skill Ansel Adams demonstrated was in his initiative to be the first to do it. Otherwise, all he did was photograph what was already in front of him. I’ve since realised the same principle applies to poverty porn photography. Buildings appear drabber and people infinitely poorer and sadder when captured in monochrome.
I got to test this theory once more a couple of days after Hurricane Irma bounced off the north coast of Cuba and headed towards Florida. The winds gradually died out in Havana but the ocean swell continued. The Straits of Florida dumped its load over the seawall and across the oily surface of the wide bitumen road for days on end, inundating large parts of the Malecón and the streets running parallel with it in Centro Habana. A couple of times a year the ocean breaches the iconic sea wall anyway. Irma made it a lot worse.
After saving the drunken Russian the previous day and surveying the damage to the barrios of Miramar, Playa and Buena Vista, Lafonda and I decided it was time to do likewise to Centro Habana. It’s Habana Vieja that draws the tourists. The old part of town has the churches, plazas, cathedrals and the fortifications. It’s in Old Havana where restaurants are situated and where most tourists spend their time. They can drink their mojito in the Bodeguita del Medio and daiquiri in the Floridita - checking off their Havana ‘must-do’ bingo cards - then head back to their hotel in Varadero none the wiser about what’s west of Prado.
THE POVERTY TRAIL: With Cuba an ideal place to take snaps of photogenic poor people, the two Spanish women above wasted no time in recording Calle San Lorenzo after Hurricane Irma hit. Note their eagerness to photograph piles of rubbish and debris (top) or corral a family into a corner in return for the sake of a few likes on Grindr. They could easily have offered to help out with the clean up, but they didn’t.
If you did take a wrong turn in the days after Hurricane Irma hit and ended up on calle San Lazaro by mistake, one would be forgiven for thinking it blew hardest through this part of town. The sides of buildings missing, balconies torn off, debris everywhere. But Prado, with its bronzed lions lining the pedestrian boulevard, is the dividing line. To the east, the preserved UNESCO world heritage site. Havana’s money maker. To the west of Prado is the real Havana. It may look like a hurricane has just ravaged it but in reality, it’s the 60-odd years of neglect that’s responsible.
CRUMBLING: An apartment block on Calle San Lorenzo. Note the resident on the first floor who is still lucky enough to have a functioning balcony, whereas her neighbour’s, on the third floor, has long since fallen away.
The Malecón was completely blocked off after Irma. Great sections of it under water. Along the part of Calle San Lorenzo, one street back, which runs parallel with the Malecón the flooding was not as bad. It meant I could survey the scene and capture some important photographs of the damage and the cleanup. Surprisingly, there were a number of tourists out this way too, attracted to the area by the promise of photographing the carnage for their own selfish gains. It was sickening. Not least because they often got in the way of my more important shots. Two Spanish women were particularly insensitive, seemingly not caring about who they thrust their cameras in front of or whether a better photographer was nearby who would be more suitable to take the photo. So long as they got their smiling black faces, set to a backdrop of crumbling facade, they were happy.
POVERTY PORN SNAPSHOT: (top left) With no electricity and rubbish building up, residents line the street; (top right) a single window frame is all that remains of the first floor of this building, but whether Irma did it or not is anyone’s guess; (bottom left) while one woman stands in the shadows of her apartment, her neighbour basks in the sun.
A sentiment shared by many people yet to visit Cuba is that they want to see the island “before the Americans ruin it”. They envision great swaths of corpulent yanquis arriving with plans to open hamburger joints, Wall-Marts, and commit random shootings. Cuba’s malady set in the moment Castro took power and let some suburbs rot when residents’ earnings couldn’t cover basic maintenance. Some of the buildings on San Lorenzo look like Greek ruins - the only difference being that, in Havana, people still live in the dilapidated apartments. Irma or no Irma, it looked like a disaster zone.
At the end of San Lorenzo, we turned right on Prado and walked the length of the boulevard until Parque Central. There, the clutch of palma royales stood like drunkards, their bedraggled fronds hanging limply like grease-matted hair. A couple of fig trees at the northern end of Parque Central had been uprooted in the storm and a gang of workmen were climbing along various parts of the prostrate tree, attacking it with hand saws and axes. Of course, we were out of Centro Habana now and well and truly into UNESCO Cuba.
PARQUE CENTRAL: On the right side of the city, this fallen tree was quickly chopped down and the park returned to it’s normal state.