Havana, Cuba. 6x7 medium format film photography.

This series was taken in Havana, Cuba during a cultural exchange between American and Cuban female artists. While I was invited as a documentary photographer for the collaboration, I also dedicated time to capturing scenes of daily life.

What I encountered wasn’t nostalgia, nor the kind of aestheticized ruin often projected onto places like Havana. It was something quieter: the weight of waiting, the intimacy of interiors, the resourcefulness stitched into daily life. I was struck by what remained, how color persisted, how gesture and dignity endured.

Each frame is less about conclusion than atmosphere. Many of the images sit in a space of suspension: between presence and absence, pride and wear, individuality and inheritance. A woman on a doorstep next to a chrome wheel. A man sweat-soaked in afternoon light, pushing coiled wire. A bird in a wooden cage mounted high on a wall. These aren’t moments of climax, but rather accumulations of small truth.

I’m drawn to how people shape their surroundings - sometimes beautifully, sometimes provisionally. These images are records of that shaping. They follow a kind of interior rhythm, attuned to the textures of time: peeling paint, hand-lettered signs, layered glances, and devotional objects that linger on shelves.

Rather than tell a story about Cuba, this work lets the details speak for themselves. It’s a portrait assembled from fragments, stitched together as part observation, part offering. Each photograph holds a kind of question: about stillness, about place, about how lives unfold within constraint.

There’s no attempt at summing up. Just a desire to look, to dwell, and to leave room for what needs room.