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

At the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, just two years after becoming a professional photographer, Raúl Cañibano joined a generation primed to document Cuba’s present-day struggles. He’s stuck with the mission for his whole career, and now offers a look into the islands future.

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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.

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Raúl Cañibano: Cienfuegos (Copyright © Raúl Cañibano, Habana, 2016) Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery/Raúl Cañibano

What’s most daring about Cuba’s tradition with surrealism, is its flourishing during a period of great cultural repression. For many photographers such as Alfredo Sarabia and later Raúl, the form and style presented a way to link their dreams and hopes to very real circumstances. For Raúl this was specific to the economic dissolution people were facing throughout the country at the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Through his work, he addresses the political state while zooming in on otherwise uncanny moments of personal and collective triumph and freedom ever since. I say otherwise for Raúl because he doesn’t typically refer to his style as surrealist, more a sort of inspired documentary. “I’m a documentarian with my own vision”, he says, which is greatly nourished by the work of painters and fellow photographers who happen to be surrealist. His photographs are finely crafted compositions, where he imparts his perception; that early influence of nature coming through in the form of quasi optical illusions and profound mirroring with the assistance of horses and dogs.

In Raúl’s oeuvre there is also a constant sense that his subjects are on the brink of time – the precipice of something life-changing. A slingshot pulled back that Raúl’s vision depicts as an aim at a boy nearby; a boy diving into the water from what looks like a cliff’s edge; a girl screaming out for hidden person, thing or feeling in close or far range. It’s immediately startling, and they remain immediately timeless. The imagination runs wild. Raúl says that developing these scenes, depends on “the photo I want and the location”. As he documents both on the street, at events, and within people’s homes, some call for a particular, more intimate approach, and others an on-the-fly approach bolstered by his devotion for Havana’s scenes.

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Raúl Cañibano: Parrandas, Camaguani, Cuba (Copyright © Raúl Cañibano, Habana, 2007) Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery/Raúl Cañibano

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Raúl Cañibano: Parrandas, Camaguani, Cuba (Copyright © Raúl Cañibano, Habana, 2007) Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery/Raúl Cañibano

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.

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(Copyright © Raúl Cañibano) Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery/Raúl Cañibano

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.

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(Copyright © Raúl Cañibano) Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery/Raúl Cañibano

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Raúl Cañibano: Habana (Copyright © Raúl Cañibano, Habana, 2023) Courtesy of the artist and The Photographers’ Gallery/Raúl Cañibano.

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About the Author

Yaya Azariah Clarke

Yaya (they/them) was previously a staff writer at It’s Nice That. With a particular interest in Black visual culture, they have previously written for publications such as WePresent, alongside work as a researcher and facilitator for Barbican and Dulwich Picture Gallery.

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