"José Martí and the Idea of Cuba"
Photographs by Alex Harris
November 14 - December 26, 2003
Main Gallery, John Hope Franklin Center
This photo exhibit by photographer and Duke professor Alex Harris, looks at contemporary Cuba in comparison to what 19th century Cuban hero José Martí envisioned for his homeland.
Harris set out for Cuba last year to capture the influence of Martí (1853-1895), a political activist and influential writer who devoted his life to ending colonial rule in Cuba. The photographer found statues of Martí everywhere: in homes, yards, schools, parks, factories, prisons, farms, and on many street corners.
For Harris, photographing with Martí in mind was an opportunity to look at contemporary Cuba through the lens of history, and to see the present reality in relation to an imagined future. Harris wrote, "I wondered if I could make photographs that could convey what it means to live in a nation -- any nation -- whose ideas are far from realized, but whose dreams remain within sight?"
Harris is a professor of the practice of public policy and documentary studies and is one of the founders of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. He has focused much of his photographic work on the Hispanic Diaspora in the American Southwest and in Cuba. His book "River of Traps: A Village Life" (1990 UNM Press) with writer William deBuys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction.
This exhibit was made possible in part by grants from the Arts and Sciences Council Committee on Faculty Research, the Duke Institute of the Arts, the Office of the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and the Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.