Raúl Cañibano is not a surrealist but rather a “documentarian with my own vision”

What makes a photographer? Some say it’s a yearning to look into the life of others; some a lust for imparting your own perception; but few mention that enigmatic force that puts a person and a camera in the same place at the right time.

Raúl Cañibano was born in Havana, in 1961, just two years after the Cuban Revolution. Living between Havana and the rural areas of the island, he often found himself transfixed by his surroundings, finding different ways to connect with the environment. “Life in the countryside impacted me a lot,” Raúl tells us. “I found myself connected to animals and their way of life. They’re some of my most beautiful memories from that time.” With such a rich tapestry of inspiration, it’s a surprise that Raúl only turned to photography as a career in 1989 after years of working as a welder. It was a visit to the Cuban photographer Alfredo Sarabia I’s exhibition of surrealist images, that Raúl marks as the moment he knew he had to add to the tradition.

A large part of Raúl’s work is representing the constantly shifting way of life on the island. “Many people have died, others have emigrated, some have moved, but many remain,” he tells us. His work is at first anthropological – that much we are sure of – but it is also a record in which he’s trying to show us that “the Cuban way of life is constantly changing.” “It’s all a part of logical evolution and my work is a record of this,” he says. “Cuba is not sociologically different from the rest of the world. Society may seem to transform very slowly but it does change, little by little”.

Raúl also has a particular way of capturing Havana’s future in his compositions. He has an affinity for capturing kids in small groups onlooking the city’s streets, activity and characters. This is no particular anomaly, documentary representations of the Caribbean in the mid-late 20th century often had children at its helm. Centred on as a way to create an emotive picture of a region and diaspora in-flux, alongside many documentations of its children as ‘self-sufficient’ or full of personality. Take Rose Murray’s Three boys pose for the camera taken in 1975 in Jamaica, which still spurs conversation about the island’s unique style, Kids at Southampton (by an unknown photographer) which contributes to the many depictions of kids of the Anglophone Caribbean migrating to the UK without their parents, or George Malave’s images of the Puerto Rican community in New York during the 1970s. Kids are everywhere. And in Raúl’s images we build a sense of their reaction to Havana’s personality; the joy, despair and curiosities of the city. In his lens the children are the future.

For Raúl, “politics is a part of life. Even if people don’t explore it in their work, it’s there”. The photographer’s interest in the human condition, as something that is in front of him, beside him, or among a group of children. When looking through his works you realise it’s not about a period, a time, a destitute condition for a people, it’s simply about mirroring the his love for Cuba’s environment. Raúl’s meeting with the profession at the time that he did has manifested in representations of country created by someone who commits their life and oeuvre to it. We can trust his images, he’s been in it for the long haul, which is something rare. So maybe that’s what makes a photographer – knowing when to pick up the camera, for the good of the people.