Making Waves: Discovering Contemporary Cuban Photography at the MFAH

Donna Tennant·
HoustonVisual Art
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Thanks to a gift from Chicago collector Madeleine Plonsker and her husband Harvey, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, now has the most complete collection of post-revolutionary Cuban photography anywhere—nearly 400 works by some 80 artists. For two years, MFAH photography curator Malcolm Daniel and MFAH research associate Raquel Carrera have been organizing Navigating the Waves: Contemporary Cuban Photography, which opens Sept. 29 and runs through Aug. 3, 2025.

This exhibition of 100 photographs traces the evolution of photography from the revolutionary takeover in 1959 through the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to Castro’s death in 2016. It celebrates the acquisition and promised gift of some 300 Cuban photographs from the Plonskers’ collection. Between 2005 and 2020, Madeleine Plonsker traveled to Cuba frequently. According to the catalogue, she became very close with many of the local photographers, getting to know them and their families and supporting them by buying their work.

The museum’s collection of Cuban photographs began in 1994, when FotoFest dedicated its festival to Latin American photography and included an exhibition of Cuban photographers. Fifteen photographers traveled to Houston, and MFAH photography curator Anne Wilkes Booth acquired 17 of their photographs. She continued acquiring Cuban photographs, and the collection grew to nearly 100 works.

In 2017, Malcolm Daniel met Madeleine at the annual meeting of the Association of International Photography Dealers, where she was showing the work of Cuban photographers. He invited her to Houston to see the museum’s holdings, and she found that the two collections were complementary, as hers picked up where the MFAH’s tapered off. Consequently, in 2022, Madeleine gifted the museum with a selection from her collection.

Daniel’s research associate for the show, Cuban native and art historian Raquel Carrera, has been working with Madeleine in Cuba for nearly a decade and working with the museum curator for two years to organize the exhibition in Houston. “I can’t imagine doing the show without her,” Daniel said. “She has served as organizer and translator, both here and on my two trips to Cuba.”

Navigating the Waves is organized into four categories, beginning with the so-called “Epic” generation of photographers, which includes Alberto Korda, Raúl Corrales, and Osvaldo Salas, all of whom were given access to Castro and his inner circle, the heroes of the revolution. The show opens with Korda’s iconic portrait of Che Guevara, Heroic Guerrilla, perhaps the most famous of all Cuban photographs. Taken in 1960, according to the curators, “it came to function like a secular image of a martyred saint” after he died while trying to organize a revolution in Bolivia in 1967. Five Points of Fidel, a dramatic view of Castro speaking, is by Salas, an established photographer in New York who returned to Cuba just two days after the revolution. These and other photographers from this period used their photographs to further the ideals of the revolution.

Photographs of life in the post-revolutionary era from the 1990s and early 2000s are on display in the first gallery. Images of the flag, military parades, and other patriotic themes honor the new Cuba, while others convey the joys and difficulties of life in rural areas. Raúl Cañibano’s photograph from his Country Land series captures a closeup of a guajiro’s face in the foreground while another works with an ax in the middle ground. José Julián Martí freezes two cocks fighting in midair.

In the 1980s, Cuba relied heavily on the Soviet Union for economic support, and when it collapsed at the end of 1991, the island experienced an economic and political crisis. The next gallery focuses on photographers who turned to more personal subjects, including gender roles and sexual identity. René Peña González’s moody portrait of a nude male wearing a long, beaded, silver necklace is a haunting image. Arien Chang Castán became interested in bodybuilders, and his photograph of two bulked-up prisoners working out is from his series Root Vegetable Diet. Many of the photographs in this section are black-and-white portraits of male nudes or young gay men.

The final gallery contains photographs made since 2005, some utilizing the same patriotic symbols as earlier work but with a subtle undercurrent of disapproval. Adrián Fernández, the son of two architects, shoots industrial remnants, unfinished construction sites, and public propaganda. Cuban and Soviet flags painted on the side of a building are weathered with age in Alfredo Sarabia Fajardo’s Tangle. A web of electrical wires and electrical boxes reference the aging power grid in Cuba, the result of an ongoing shortage of fossil fuels.

In 2006, Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother Raúl. To create a photograph of an empty lectern (A Happy Day FC No. 11), Reynier Leyva Novo digitally removed Castro from a 1966 photo by Korda. “To remove the image of the leader…. doesn’t always imply absence,” Leyva Novo said. “In many instances, it suggests freedom, openness, and a multitude of meanings.” Unfortunately, life in Cuba remains difficult, and many photographers have left the island, including Leyva Novo, who moved to Houston in 2022.

Navigating the Waves presents an opportunity to examine the history and ongoing development of photography in Cuba since the start of the revolution. For photography curator Malcomb Daniel, organizing the show was an illuminating experience. “I was not that familiar with Cuban photography,” he said. “Finding these artists was a discovery for me, and it’s been very exciting.”

—DONNA TENNANT

Donna Tennant

Donna Tennant is a Houston-based art historian who has been writing about art and artists for many years.