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In the fall of 1992, I made my first trip to Cuba, on a cheap week-long package tour bought in Merida, Mexico. For many years I had strongly desired Cuba, as if longing for a woman that you meet only once and can’t get out of your mind. I’m almost certain I lived there in another life.
- Ernesto Bazan
Havana, November14th,1992
I walk, walk all over Havana. I walk for hours; I never get tired of walking. I gaze at the constantly changing reality that unfolds slowly and incessantly before my eyes. Everything interests me, it all seems new and old at the same time: I’m in Cuba for the first time, but I was born in Sicily with a Spanish last name.
Havana is in a state of physical and mental decomposition, in distress and falling apart. Degradation is vast. There are traces of broken dreams and desolation everywhere.
Havana, November18th,1995
After traveling for so many years, I finally understand what has fueled my passion for photography. By endlessly walking the streets in search of instances of everyday life, I feel that I’ve found my lost childhood. At first, it was overflowing felicity. My mind couldn’t go beyond that.
I loved being in Havana: a powerful sense of belonging seized me, as if I had always been here.
Every time I left, my only certainty was that... I wanted to return. Yesterday, walking on the Malecòn, breathing the fresh sea breeze, it dawned upon me that I had found my roots right here, unconsciously sought after for so long. Here, I’ve become aware of what had motivated my globetrotting urge, my obstinate picture-taking among distant cultures in an attempt to capture feelings and instants that would bring me closer to my origins.
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