Postcard Havana

Walker Evans was a lifelong collector of postcards – by the time of his death in 1975 he had acquired more than 9,000 examples, all filed away in shoe-boxes and now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Evans expressed a strong preference for cards produced before 1925 and held a very low opinion of cards produced after that date. It’s unlikely that his Havana trip of 1933 added much, if anything to his collection, and some of those shown here would not have met with his approval. For a longer discussion of Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard from 10 years ago, please follow this link.

The city views of Havana show a neat, tidy and well mannered colonial capital with a fine stock of Spanish Baroque buildings and pre-date Evans’s visit by about three decades. Widespread civic neglect and a rising tide of corruption and criminality later left their mark on the city. What Evans saw and recorded in 1933 was blistering paint, crumbling plaster and networks of subsidence cracks. The final postcard shows the famous Hotel Nacional which opened for business in 1930. In October 1933 it would sustain serious damage as a result of gun battles between pro-Battista and anti Battista factions, following the deposal of Machado. Still more postcards from Havana can be seen by following these links, Havana Deserta, Calle Obispo and Baling Tobacco.

Off the Shelf: The Crime of Cuba

In the course of 50 years, Carleton Beals (1893–1979), wrote and published more than 50 books, many of them on Latin-American subjects. He never wavered in his support for left wing causes and in his latter years wrote in defence of Castro’s Cuban Revolution. Beals produced this book, The Crime of Cuba, in less than 3 months after a visit to Cuba in late 1932. It reads as an angry denunciation of American interference in the island’s politics and economy. Following an account of Cuba’s troubled history under Spanish rule and the virtual eradication of the indigenous population, Beals describes how the US government reserved the right to intervene militarily in the defence of “political order and private property” via the passage of the Platt Amendment in 1901 in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. When Beals visited in 1932, the island was gripped by political unrest and violence as resistance mounted to the tyrannical rule of dictator, Gerardo Machado. The book presents a charge-sheet of Machado’s abuses of power, flagrant disregard for human rights and brutal campaign of intimidation and assassination directed against his political opponents in the press, the student movement and the trade unions.

Beals’s book was to be published by Lippincott in summer 1933. A senior editor at the publisher, Ernestine Evans, recommended Walker Evans to provide some photographic content. Despite being short of both work and cash, Evans presented a surly and truculent face to Beals on the occasion of their one and only meeting, insisting that his photos should be bound in at the end of the text in a sequence to be determined by him. Evans spent 3 weeks in Havana, taking photographs and hanging out with Ernest Hemingway, who co-opted Evans as his nightly drinking partner. More than 400 photos were taken, from which Evans selected 64 for submission to the publisher. He indicated a group of 31 for publication. Although Evans as a Manhattan bohemian was often in the company of Marxists and Communist party members, he was no radical. Fastidious to a point, he would always hold himself apart from progressive politics, which made him a curious choice for this assignment. On the streets of Havana, Evans could not escape the evidence of the brutality of the Machado regime, but he refrained from making it the central point of his photography. What he ended up with was something he was much more comfortable with – a rich portrait of the vitality of the city’s street life. Poverty and deprivation were part of that portrait, and presented with the studied neutrality that Evans brought to all his work. For the most part, Evans was drawn to subjects that had preoccupied him back in New York – detailed scrutiny of the built environment, outdoor advertising, hand painted signage, street traders and sidewalk compositions with figures. Portrait subjects were mostly dock workers, sex workers and street people. A minority of photos were taken in the suburbs and surrounding small towns and illustrated the ubiquitous dilapidation and decay, once the faded grandeur of the Baroque city centre was left behind.

By the time The Crime of Cuba was published on August 17th. 1933, Machado’s grip on power was ended – he fled into exile on August 12th. His excesses were no longer acceptable to the US government who brokered his removal from offices. Ever the optimist, the artist Ben Shahn (longtime friend of Evans) predicted a victory for the proletariat in post-Machado Cuba. It was Evans who would be proved correct when he predicted an increase in comfort for the bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and nothing for the proletariat. As for the book – it contained 31 of Evans’s photos plus 3 that he selected from local newspaper archives in Havana and by their content and location at the back of the book, they formed a tonal counterpoint to Beals’s polemic, while providing a context for the political and social drama that Beals was describing. For Evans, the experience would serve as a rehearsal for his contribution to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men in 1941, where his photographs would again occupy their own exclusive space, only this time they would appear at the front of the book. 

Long Story Short: Long-winded, left-wing propagandist engages services of fancy photographer to bring some visual interest to dreary diatribe of anti-Americanism.

Bridge Postcards of 2016

This year’s selection begins in Romania – a train crossing the Danube emerges through a ceremonial arch from a truss bridge toward a platform where a listless group of passengers wait. Elaborate castellations are flanked by oversize sculptures of armed guards, bayonets at the ready. And there’s some nonsense with a ladder. On our imaginary journey to Quincy Point we pass suspension bridges, lifting bridges, swing bridges, causeways and viaducts. Last year's selection can be revisited by following this link.

Havana Deserta

These attractively de-saturated colour postcards come from the first decade of the newly independent Republic of Cuba beginning in 1902. Turbulent times including a disputed election, an armed insurrection and a two year occupation courtesy of the US armed forces. None of this drama disturbs the surface of these untroubled soporific images of thinly populated streets where very little stirs. Postcard photographers were notorious early-risers, anxious to avoid the rush hour crowds whose blurry images could compromise the integrity of their otherwise perfect compositions. An empty city was highly desirable – a rival attraction, a bullfight, a Papal mass or a boxing tournament was just the thing to draw the crowds away. The colonial architecture inherited from the Spanish retains a crisp and well maintained air that would gradually decay as the political fabric was torn apart in a succession of ideological conflicts over the next half century.