Calle Habana

Head On Photo Festival 2013

Susan Papazian

event-detail-person-vertical — Susan Papazian

This event has concluded

Dates: 14 Jun 2013 - 26 Jun 2013

Location: Ginkgo Gallery 166 St Johns Road Glebe NSW 2037 Australia

Hours: Tue-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 10-2pm

Entry Fee: Free

Exhibition Event:

Official Opening 14/06/2013 8:00 am

“If I get lost in Cuba, come look for me in the streets of Old Havana.”

Susan Papazian travelled to Cuba late last year and ‘Calle Habana’ is the result of her trip to an extraordinary country which the world pictures in retro colour. It was Papazian’s intention to produce a body of work in colour but what has emerged instead is a restrained yet powerful collection of black and white images.

These elegant photographs depict the everyday activities of people in Havana; young men engaged in a soccer match, elderly gents in languid repose at a bar and lines of stark white laundry fragmenting a cloudless sky.

Papazian alludes to the well-known descriptors of old Havana such as its crumbling architecture and vintage transport, but these are underplayed. What comes to the fore in this work is the grace and rhythm of the people as they walk a dog, catch a bus or negotiate a puddle.