UN POPOLO NEL VENTO DELLA STORIA
Personal notes by Annamaria Uccella
The diplomatic mediation led by President Barack Obama, Pope Francis and President Raul Castro, aimed at thawing of political relations between the US and Cuba is modern history being written. Meanwhile, the Cuban people continues its existence between history and everyday life. “I Am Cuba Reunion – The life of a people in the wind of history” is a cultural project, a photographic record made on the sites of the Cuban revolution, a tangible testimony of a reality becoming collective imagination. The Photographic research has come from the news of the thaw between the US and Cuba. The photographic medium has provided the key to understanding a reality in the making; it has unveiled details that become inner truths worth to share. The narrative unfolds from the myth and through the persistence of the collective memory of the revolution. Following the echo of its values comes to the ordinary existence, which is the essence of the dignity of a people.
RACCONTI VISIVI – VISUAL STORIES
L’ECO DELLA RIVOLUZIONE – THE ECHO OF THE REVOLUTION
VIGNALES
PIAN DEL RIO
CAMAGUEY
TRINIDAD DE CUBA
HOLGUIN
HAVANA
Preface by Roberto Grossi
The cultural project of Annamaria Uccella outlines a path of knowledge about the history of Cuba and invites us, with gracefully stylistic and expressive depth to give up worn out stereotypes and to undertake a deeper reflection on the destiny of a people. After all, the photographic research of an artist is the attempt to investigate the multiple realities of space and time, from the revolution that has inflamed the whole world to the scenes of everyday life, between tradition and modernity, social contradictions and cultural identities, in a world that always changes although seemingly motionless. The time is relative, Einstein said, its only value is given by what we do while going through it. And the shots of Annamaria Uccella are like the rhythm of times. They do not propose ideas purely aesthetic or rhetorical but are immersed in the very existence of the real contexts, in looks, actions, which become so universal. It is a look never “from outside” but into the atmosphere, portrays places that belong to history, raises questions of a changing environment. The photographs thus become research and story together, creating sensations and opening towards an imaginary, questioning the individual sensitivity and shakes the collective consciousness. A work of sophisticated technical knowledge and thick communicative because never dull or repetitive, always respectful, but, at the same time, able to capture the images and values and that soul that only the artistic gesture can represent. Cuba, therefore, there appears to be a postcard, but we are guided, with delicacy and strength, the reading of a story and a real journey that throws all of us toward a future that is for us to build.