Rohit Chawla’s new series captures the vintage romance of Havana

One of the most striking images in Rohit Chawla’s new series,Havana, is of an old bespectacled lady, sporting an array of vibrant blooms in her hair, beaming with smile. Photographed against a Spartan beige wall, her entire being radiates cheer and positivity. In a way, this portrait captures the very essence of Cuba and its people—of keeping music, dance and laughter alive in the face of the many challenges that it has seen over the years.

Chawla first visited Cuba ten years ago, but it was only on a recent trip, on an assignment for the MGM Muthu Hotels, that he got to explore the country extensively. “Havana is the real heart of Cuba, and it became the focus of this exhibition. This time, after being exposed to the country in its entirety, I was filled with an admiration for its people, who manage with less in every aspect of modern-day living because of the pervading sanctions [The US has maintained economic sanctions against Cuba since 1962] and yet go about the business of life without bitterness,” says Chawla.

In his new series, which was earlier exhibited at The Quorum Club, Gurugram and will move next month to its Mumbai space, the Goa-based photographer has chosen to focus on the resilience of the nation. His frames evoke a sense of nostalgia, of the city of Havana being frozen in time. Images of Che Guevera loom large in cigar factories, one can see portraits of merry musicians in jazz clubs, and then there are architectural elements that reflect Baroque and Art Deco styles.

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As a photographer, he found purity and poetry in Havana’s architecture, and the sheer simplicity of the city’s cultural life appealed to the minimalist in him.

Chawla travelled to Fidel Castro’s hometown of Biran and also to Santiago de Cuba, the other major city in the country. However, he felt that Havana had it all—it was a city that had defied time. The entire experience felt akin to having travelled back to the 1960s-70s in a time machine. There are no glass facades or endless high rise buildings. “If I had to define Havana in three words, it would—cars, cigars and music. You see these long vintage cars from the 1940s still on the streets. There are hardly any workshops in the world that manufacture these parts. However, there are engineers in the city, who manage to keep these cars in pretty good shape. I travelled in 10 to 15 of these during my time in the city, and they reminded me of the good old Ambassadors,” he adds.

People and portraits have always been at the heart of Chawla’s work. In this series too, one can see evocative portraits of the many citizens of Cuba. There are images of people immersed in learning ballet, a set of boxers looking straight into the camera, and more. Some of the portraits—of people dressed in eclectic attire—seem straight out of the pages of a fashion magazine. And yet these are regular people as photographed by Chawla in cafes, cigar factories, cruising in cars. “Portraits are indeed the leitmotif of my craft. They serve as a window to the soul and culture of any place,” he says.

In the last ten years, while other things might not have changed in the city, the food has improved by many shades. You can frequent private restaurants called palidas, which are owned by families there. Of these, one of the most famous cafes is La Guarida, which has hosted discerning guests for years now. “I have two images in the series of the same place taken ten years in time. There is also an image of the first Indian restaurant in Cuba, the Buena Vista Curry Club, run by Paramjit Singh, the longest living Indian in Cuba,” he says. “I wanted to capture the resilience of someone, who has been living there for 25 years out of choice.”

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One of the highlights of the series is Chawla’s photos of the Finca Vigia, Ernest Hemingway’s home in Havana. The American author, while extremely minimalist in his writing style, seemed to have a maximalist style of living. Chawla has tried to bring out these contradictions through his photos. “Finca Vigia, which is part literary folklore, offers a necessary peek into Ernest Hemingway’s inner being,” he elaborates. That comes through in the objects that he chose to surround himself with. His house is a reflection of his larger-than-life appetite for life and love for the outdoors. “Even his own vanity is recorded on a wall, where he used to inscribe his weekly waist measurements,” adds Chawla. He chose to photograph in pristine black-and-white to retain a certain uniformity and luminosity, which sometimes gets corrupted by colour. “The romance of the house was also heightened by his equally glamorous guests such as Ava Gardener and Spencer Tracy with whom he would often nurse a Daiquiri at the El Floridita bar in Havana,” he says.

The Havana series is also Chawla’s effort to bring back the purity of travel photography, which in some ways has been usurped by ‘selfie-takers’. “Today everyone is documenting food on their plates. It has become a bit of a joke. There are two-and-a-half long lines in Santorini of tourists wanting to take a selfie. You won’t find that in Cuba. Only a discerning traveller goes there. I would suggest for Cuba to be on everyone’s bucket list,” he says.