May 29, 2006
Cruelty In Color
by Jerome du Bois
[What follows is a review of a review, but I have seen a representative sample of Michael Eastman's Havana work, though not at Mesa Arts Center. Catherine and I saw four large prints out at the ArtsScottsdale thingerdoo in late March.]
Another instance of The Rebarb. Another happy stab at the heart of civilized life, followed by a stream of stinging salt for the fresh red wound.
I don't know what's worse, a blind fool or a sighted one, but worse than both is the person who knowingly perpetuates human suffering for the sake of transient pleasures --and money.
Photographer Michael Eastman is one of these people. And so is local art reviewer Lilia Menconi. Neither one can justifiably plead ignorance of the average Cuban's daily hell --nobody can anymore-- but they do plead such ignorance. Or they simply don't want to know. And then they blithely turn away from this hell to talk about the pretty things. This is deeply disingenuous.
But Eastman says he tries to avoid making any political comment in his work because, as he puts it, he doesn't know enough about the politics of Cuba to do so.
I cannot forgive this vampire. The simple fact of his continuing presence on the island, over four years of visits, perpetuates the horror. Everywhere he puts his feet he steps on some Cuban's back. Every dollar he spends feeds a Cuban prison guard. He must know these things. If he claims ignorance, he's a damned liar. He doesn't talk about the politics because he wants to maintain access. He doesn't want to queer his deal.
The politics of Cuba are simple. An entire island of people has been held hostage for almost fifty years by an extended crime family I call the eFe, complete with bonebreaker protection rackets, contacts with other international gangsters, the protracted squeezing of a disarmed population, and the ideological sideshow called the Revolution, brainwashing the children with newspeak: "To die for The Revolution is to live." The eFe will keep trying to turn the people into toys for tourists, and against each other, until Cuba is just North Korea minus the special meat. It's an old scenario, Mr. Eastman, and you're a willing player on the side of evil. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should burn your Cuba series, and you should never return to the Island until the people are free. Yes, I'm preaching here, but not to the choir, liar.
Now on to fisking this dishonest review.
Lilia Menconi's review begins:
This guy knows how to take a photo.
This woman knows how to write a sentence.
That was my first thought--
--this is gonna be deep--
--when I entered the gallery space at Mesa Arts Center. Fine-art photographer Michael Eastman's interiors of crumbling Cuban mansions are breathtaking --and they're enormous, about 5x4 feet on average.
That word crumbling, with its whiff of quiet decay . . . In Cuba, the word is derrumbe, and it means collapse. Not gently flaking away in the salmon-pink evening while you raise your mojito when struck with one of life's little vagaries. No. It means KABOOM the whole fucking building has fallen in on your family, killing them all, and taking their breath, indeed.
Each work, with its large scale and intricate detail, is designed to be experienced like the grand paintings of the old masters. The large prints invite the viewer to step into the photograph and visually "walk around" the space. The exhibition "Cuba -- Havana Interiors" was created over a period of four years, as Eastman traveled to Cuba and explored the dilapidated architecture of Havana's Ambassador Row.
As I wandered the old mansions, I learned more about Cuba than I could from any textbook.
Bullshit. What she learned wouldn't fill a teaspoon.
Fidel's Stairway offers the ghost of a grand aristocratic estate. This photo captures the ascending architecture of the elite --only now it is cracked, moldy and broken. The stained, crumbling wall frames each stair step. The partial handrail ends at an elaborate pedestal, supporting a statue --a classically draped female figure-- with no head.
I can provide an alternate stairway photo which more accurately reflects the bizarre disparities of Cuban reality, complete with one of the "elite." Here it is:
This is Kcho, a rich Cuban artist, having fun in his own mansion, reportedly a gift from eFe himself. I wrote about it here. Maybe if Ms. Menconi read it, she would learn something worthwhile.
Dining Room makes me thankful for the invention of color photography. From a sunlit window off-frame, the sea-foam-green walls bounce off one another and create an incredible glow. It is easy to imagine that Eastman's skin looked green as he took the photo. He showcases his skill by capturing the light --anyone who has snapped a photo of an Arizona sunset knows how challenging it is.
After the novelty of the outrageous color wears off, the curious facets of the space come to light. Again, each splinter, water streak, and structural bruise is captured in such fine detail that you can almost smell the dank atmosphere. But each surface is freshly dusted. White, unfaded paperwork is neatly stacked on the table, and --is that a bag of takeout in the background? And yet, the racks of books under the archway are riddled with curling covers and browned pages.
Each splinter, water streak and structural bruise is there because nobody can afford to repair them. And the surfaces are dusted because people live there. How do you keep your house, Ms. Menconi? The "bag of takeout" is a jaba vinyl, the plastic bag ordinary Cubans carry everywhere in their daily scavenging for food. Often they have to scavenge for the plastic bags themselves, and use them over and over and over.
Notice she doesn't mention the television in the lower right corner. Why should she? She sees them everywhere she goes, here in the States. But in Cuba televisions cost more than they do here, and in dollars. While people in the free world vie with each other to show off the biggest plasma screen, Cubans must pay more for a little old Sony than they earn in three years. And then most of what they get to see is the Dictator droning on and on and on.
As for the books, you can be sure they are State-approved and harmless. Dozens of imprisoned independent librarians could testify to that fact. Look around at your own books, Ms. Menconi, and realize that even one of them could land you in a filthy hole for years.
The photographs in this exhibition are amazing, but left me wanting. The decaying interiors sprinkled with evidence of habitation create a mystery, and I wanted to know more, to know the stories behind the people living between [?] them.
So she got on the internet and went to The Real Cuba, right? Then Val Prieto's Babalu Blog, or any of the Cuba blogs on his sidebar? No. That's reality. That's the truth. The inconvenient truth. Instead, she went to the horse's ass's mouth.
So I called Eastman. I found out that, yes, people live in these spaces --with much love and care. I also learned that Eastman does not change a thing when he takes a photograph. His background is in landscape and architecture photography, and with this work, he emphasizes the "pride in poverty" that he noticed during his time in Cuba --creating a portrait of the people by photographing their homes.
Here's the salt in the wound. "Pride in poverty." He casually trashes the ragged dignity of people who are among the most inventive and resourceful in the world. They are not proud of being poor. They are proud despite being made poor by a filthy murderer who has stolen more than half a billion dollars from them. And then Eastman comes along and tries to steal their very souls.
He met Cubans who were both pro-American and pro-Castro, obviously a curious contradiction.
That's because somebody's always listening, either electronically or undercover. And what Cubans did he meet, anyway? Contact with all non-Cubans is strictly regulated by the government. I doubt he met with any real dissidents; they would give him a wide berth, since their very lives are in daily danger, and they don't need his kind of light on them.
But Eastman says he tries to avoid making any political comments in his work because, as he puts it, he doesn't know enough about the politics of Cuba to do so. Eastman wanted to simply present a moment --the place in which the Cuban citizens were during the time of his visit.
Which Cuban citizens? At this moment, thousands of Cuban citizens languish in one of 300+ prisons in La Isla Cárcel.
He does it successfully. His technical skill allows him to capture visual moments that are usually only seen firsthand. The light and colors are so brilliant, it's almost as if you're seeing these images through his eyeball instead of his camera.
"I believe in honesty," Eastman says. "I never set up a photograph. I just try to record the subject in a documentary style."
I must say, I've never seen a documentary look so good.
I must say, Ms. Menconi, I've often seen writing as lazy and pedestrian as yours, reflecting your unreflective mind.
People are so easily impressed. The guy can set up a tripod, frame an obvious static scene, choose a lens, focus, and read numbers on a light meter. Technical skills from a six-week community college course. I'm referring to the Havana series, remember. Time, and light, and the ghostly imprints of real people's lives, do all the work. Cuba does all the work here--with no reward. Michael Eastman goes click, click, click, gears up the artmachine, and cranks 'em out in three sizes.
And steals some more of Cuba's soul in the process. He is dishonest and dishonorable.
A succe$$ful photographer who really cared about Cuba would be willing to burn his ticket there forever if he could bring back images of truth. He would ignore the picturesque irrelevancies of Ambassador Row. He would invest in several of the latest high-tech, hi-res miniaturized cameras, along with the accessories and software to connect to the internet. Then he would do as Ben Corbett did, and slip into the real Cuba. He would have guides take him as close as they could to attacks by the Rapid Response Brigades, or the walls and barbed wire of hellholes like Red Ceramic and Kilo18, or the blatant hypocrisies of Omnipotent Tourists. He would then send this electronic samizdat out anonymously into the world. He would keep working like this until the heat was just around the corner, and then he would entrust his equipment to the next brave photographer, and go back to the States with MININT none the wiser.
But that would have to be a different Michael Eastman than the safe, smug one we have now.
CODA: Minor technical note about color. One of Eastman's galleries rhapsodizes about how Eastman is so good at color that color is the true subject of his work. I don't think so. If he really valued color quality (and print longevity), he wouldn't use the cheapest method of photographic printing, the C-Type print; not when Cibachrome and Fuji Color Crystal Archive are available. It's just that Eastman and his gallerists are cheap.
Posted by Jerome at May 29, 2006 06:50 AM | TrackBack