Photographer
Iller Bedogni
HABANA
So…I came here, it was not difficult, I came in silence, I am just one among many. I looked at this city, these people, the eyes of these children. I did not think about the difficulty of capturing all this with my camera, I simply did it, without ever taking my eyes off those decaying walls and the dignity of those people who once again managed to move me. On my last trip I saw the renovation, or perhaps just observed it, and I can say that it is beautiful, carried out with respect for culture and history. The last time I left the city, with my suitcase in my hands, the sea in front of me and Habana Vieja behind me, I thought I was lucky because this place managed to change me. I left wrapped in the lights and shadows of the images I had collected over the years, I went back to my planes and my work, knowing that the silence was over. To the taxi driver who, with his old car and his trousers worn down by poverty, approaches me and asks me if I want to pass through Habana Vieja again on the way to the airport, I say no. I want to leave it like that, abandoned to the elements. I want to leave it like this, abandoned to the wind and the clutter, hoping that time can no longer steal anything from it.
Iller Bedogni
Collection:
HABANA
So…I came here, it was not difficult, I came in silence, I am just one among many. I looked at this city, these people, the eyes of these children. I did not think about the difficulty of capturing all this with my camera, I simply did it, without ever taking my eyes off those decaying walls and the dignity of those people who once again managed to move me. On my last trip I saw the renovation, or perhaps just observed it, and I can say that it is beautiful, carried out with respect for culture and history. The last time I left the city, with my suitcase in my hands, the sea in front of me and Habana Vieja behind me, I thought I was lucky because this place managed to change me. I left wrapped in the lights and shadows of the images I had collected over the years, I went back to my planes and my work, knowing that the silence was over. To the taxi driver who, with his old car and his trousers worn down by poverty, approaches me and asks me if I want to pass through Habana Vieja again on the way to the airport, I say no. I want to leave it like that, abandoned to the elements. I want to leave it like this, abandoned to the wind and the clutter, hoping that time can no longer steal anything from it.
Iller Bedogni
Habana vieja
Reconstruction has already begun. The Plan Maestro for the ‘integral revitalisation’ of Habana’s historic centre and its Ciudad Vieja is engaging technicians and resources from many parts of the world. There is talk of recovery and reuse, of sustainable human development of the Centro Historico recognised by Unesco as a World Heritage Site in 1982.
What will become of this city and the thin veil of nostalgia that covers it, of its beautiful, crumbling decadence? What will fill this absence of billboards, here where there is nothing to buy? What will take the place of the cracks and crevices, the mildew stains and alleys with pools of stagnant water, where there is even a lack of rubbish because nobody throws anything away here?
A NO drawn on the crumbling low wall, barely opposed to the Caribbean sea, greets me at the entrance to the old city. This mute and indecipherable NO is not meant to be opposition to progress, but a request for help and respect for an ancient soul, which still pulsates with suffering and small joys in the games of children, in the clear, lived-in gazes of the people in the streets, in the complacent siesta of an old man in a wheelbarrow.
I, too, wanted to collect a part of that legacy: one among many who stops to play on the improvised glass marbles track, who finds time for a smile at a little girl and her snow-white western doll, one among many who mingle with groups on their way out of school and feel the breath of the mighty stone walls and their surrender to time.
As I leave the city, perhaps for the last time, my gaze still turned towards that little stone wall against the sea, I see a young man absorbed and aware of his future, then a large wave that refracts, breaks into a thousand iridescent drops and lets fall a rain shower full of expectation and fragile hope.
