Paper short abstract:

The photographic image played a distinct role in constructing a utopian narrative of Cuba’s early revolutionary period. Yet, in the 1970s, known as el quinquenio or gris (the grey period), a centralization of power and institutionalization of Soviet-style policies shifted its role and function.

Paper long abstract:

This study aims to examine the role of the photographer and the function of the photographic image in the context of the 1970s' shifting cultural politics and increasingly Communist ideological climate by focusing on the work of a generation of image-makers who emerged during this period. My presentation will feature two seminal photo essays, printed in two of Cuba's major cultural periodical that are each representative of distinct cultural political moments (1970 & 1975). The photographs are imbued with a personal aesthetic vision that challenged the purely didactic dimension of the journalistic photography that circulated during this period. As such, I argue that these two publications (Cuba Internacional and Revolucion y Cultura) became sites of relative artistic freedom not evidenced in other areas and thus revealed both an emergent and autonomous photographic language, as well as shifts in ideological attitudes.