The conference room of the Art Center hosted the discussion about the relevant Cuban photographer, chaired by lens of artist Julio Larramendi and curator María Alejandra Martínez.
The panelists highlighted the impact of Fernández’s images, with a cinematic and epic vision.
Martínez pointed out that the exhibition showed during this May Pilgrimage, called “Beyond the Epic,” bringing together a selection of Fernández’s lesser-known and disseminated works.
She also pointed out that his work demarcates the boundaries between photoreportage and photo essay.
For his part, Larramendi stressed that Fernández is the only living photographer with the National Fine Arts Award and the only one from the epic.
He was the first photographer to arrive at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs), during the mercenary invasion of the United States in 1961, he added and pointed out the testimonial values of his work.
He recalled that he started working at a very young age and learned to do it practically alone.
Fernández’s most important photographs include images captured in Cuba and during missions as a war correspondent in Venezuela (1959), Playa Girón (1961), Angola (1981-83) and Nicaragua (1983).
According to the coordinator of the space Yurisel Moreno, dedicating Babel to photography in 2024 has been very successful, because this artistic manifestation has the gift of captivating memory.
Photographs constitute graphic documentation of what can happen at a specific moment and also of feelings, memories and experiences, which can mark an individual or a group, she highlighted.
From these different perspectives, Babel invades the exhibition halls of the city with a kind of collage of images authored by young people from the Hermanos Saíz Association, together with established artists such as Humberto Mayor, Roberto Chile and Julio Larramendi, Moreno stated.
The coordinator of Babel also pointed out that this offers a diverse and even controversial panorama of current Cuban events and at the same time what has happened in the last 70 years.
Also the director of the Plastic Arts department at Casa de las Américas, Silvia Llanes, will offer the conference “the Art of Our America Haydee Santamaría collection and present several books from the institution,” she reported.
She announced the presentation on Tuesday, May 7, of the Rapé project, related to the use of waste from the industrial tobacco process.
May 5 within the World Festival of Artistic Youth is the day of transition and the specific actions in the program allude to the importance of unity between the traditional and the contemporary, experience and the novel.
ef/oda/ale/ebe
