Mother and Child Disunion

© David Greenfield 2015

On a side street in Old Havana our eyes locked. He was a boy in wondrous gaze clutching his mother’s hem. I was strolling with a few Americans. Unlike the boy’s awe, even a glimpse of mami’s face reflected something very different … deep concern. Their yin-yang of expressions formed a perfect photographic decisive moment. Click. For me the moment also recalled  memory of a mystery, a musical mystery.

Consider these lyrics from Paul Simon’s Mother and Child Reunion (1972).

I would not give you false hope

On this strange and mournful day

But the mother and child reunion

Is only a motion away, oh, little darling of mine

As soon as the song hit the charts fans searched for hidden meanings and pondered Paul’s inspiration for writing.

Did the reunion take place in the afterlife or was it a down on earth meeting of biological parent with a child previously put up for adoption; why a false hope; why sad and mournful, and what action could trigger a reunion that was only a motion away?

Back on the street, rather than union, I sensed a certain disunion. The boy appeared awestruck, perhaps imaging what magic the Americanos possess. The mother's demeanor suggested a discomforting uncertainty. Was it not knowing how Cuban life might change if the sought after rapprochement with the US ever occurs? Would outcomes be for the better, or not? 

Two weeks after I captured the image, Breaking News stunned us all with broadcast of renewed diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba. It came decades after La Revolución, Castro’s embrace of Communism, the Embargo, and severed ties. A reunion of sorts was now in the making. Would it be a false hope?

Spoiler alert: When Paul Simon was pressed to offer the ‘true’ inspiration for the song title, he admitted his creativity was drawn directly from a chicken and egg menu item on the NYC Chinese restaurant he frequented.

Go figure!

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One-A-Day: not your morning vitamin

© David Greenfield 2015

“When your mouth drops open, click the shutter” advised Harold Feinstein (1931-2015), Coney Island’s native son and esteemed photographer/teacher/mentor. Overlay his principle on an axis composed of your head, eye & heart, and quality images are sure to flow from the camera. But to ‘click’ anytime anywhere at the drop of your jaw, you must have a camera at the ready.

Question: what’s the best camera for that?

Answer: the one you have with you!

Pulitzer Prize-winning former White House photographer David Hume Kennerly has taken note. After decades as an accomplished photojournalist, he recently stepped away from the regular grind of lugging a cache of heavy, bulky camera equipment and set aside a year of image making using only an iPhone, the camera he always had with him. The output, elegantly presented in his book ‘On the iPhone – secrets and tips’, was inspirational for me. The result: ‘One-A-Day: not your morning vitamin’, the newest Gallery to my web site.

Starting mid-August 2015 and through November I’ve composed, posted, dated, and titled one, sometimes two, image(s) a day. Almost all were made with an iPhone. I say ‘almost’ rather than ‘all’, because I still carry ‘my other camera’ around much of the time!

The photo above was recorded on September 3^rd.  Click to open the full One-A-Day gallery and bookmark the site to come back regularly for a daily dose.

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Real Possibilities

    © David Greenfield 2015

Baby Boomers strive for youthful aging with a focus on image, fitness, performance (of all sorts), and new experiences. It’s no surprise that ‘Sixty is the new forty’ is now part of our vernacular.

Sexagenarians, septuagenarians, octogenarians, and beyond, find new ways to ‘push the envelope’. The attempts are celebrated, certainly no longer raising eyebrows and, for the most part, feats are accomplished. When former Olympic decathlete, sixty-something Bruce Jenner, re-emerged as Caitlyn on the cover of Vanity Fair, the public paid scant attention to her coming-out image as a bathing suit clad twenty-something.

In another magazine, AARP, the traditionally stodgy organization, now seems to employ only youthful and fit models. The organization wants to keep its raison d’être relevant. That being the case, will it be long before ‘Five is the new fifty’? Is it a Real Possibility?

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Che

Dr. Ernesto 'Che' Guevera

La Rambla in Barcelona, Le Champs-Élysées in Paris, Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, Fifth Avenue in New York, and closer to home, Newbury Street in Boston - a walk down any of these alluring promenades offers a captivating potpourri for people watching. But while strolling down the narrow and lesser known Calle Obispo in Cuba’s Habana Viejo, someone I spotted partially crouched in the shadows brought me to a standstill. I had to turn for a second look.

At best, you might say he was lean. At worst, just a notch above ‘skin and bones’. Although one should not judge a book by its cover, it wasn’t a stretch to believe this guy had limited means and few resources for the comforts of daily living. He was actually among the majority of Cubans on this island vestige of the Communist empire. The minority are those who’ve eked out a better position, having parlayed reforms Fidel Castro implemented following dissolution of the USSR and Cuba’s ensuing Special Period economic crisis. Without big time subsidies from its sugarcane daddy in Moscow, Cuba’s viability was doomed unless a spigot of rejuvenating free enterprise could be turned on. Fidel did just that, but it was clear, however, the guy huddled at the Obispo curb had not yet taken a sip.

This brings me to his attire, specifically the T-shirt strategically torn to expose a pectoral tattoo of Cuba's legendary revolutionary and Fidel’s right-hand comrade-in-arms Ernesto Guevara, better known simply as ‘Che’.  The T's ragged hole flaunted Che’s image suggesting the wardrobe malfunction could not have been random. The tattoo is but another rendition of the most widely reproduced photo of all time, and not just in Cuba. Alberto Korda, Fidel’s personal photographer, captured it on assignment. Che’s mystique resonates with all would be revolutionaries, as well as Cubans of every social stratum. My fascination was a puzzling disconnect between the continued desire to demonstrate such devotion to the Revolution despite what it delivered for this guy fifty years after former dictator Gulgencio Batista was ousted.

Back to Calle Obispo for a moment … Before continuing to meander and see what else my eyes could savor, I gave the guy a few CUCs, each roughly equivalent to a dollar and about twenty-five times more valuable than each peso of subsidy allocated to Cubans for basic commodities. Then I focused to create this Obispo image. It seems to prop up the enigma of Fidel, Che, and the Revolution’s enduring popularity set against a backdrop of rough daily life for most Cubans. But decades after Fidel’s band of guerrillas prevailed, it offers little in the way of answers.

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A peso, or a CUC, for his thoughts

And just like that, the engine coughed up a quiet growl and the ferry slipped from the dock through muck laden waters on its tack across the bay.

We bid adios to La Habana Vieja, Cuba’s Old Havana, setting our sights on the next stop, the City of Regla. ‘We’, were a tossed salad of passengers; some of the faithful making their way to Santeria Church, some delivering pizza-style cartons of fish stacked and loosely tied on the front and rear of bicycles, some like the legendary chicken, just wanting 'to get to the other side’, and a dozen or so Americans on a people-to-people mission of discovery to this island vestige of the Cold War. We were definitely a mix, but for a few moments in time we were as one, sharing the same steerage-level space.

The voyage was slow, even keeled, and brief. Even so, one face from the grey mass grabbed my attention and held it all the way. It was of a guy, my guess about twenty-something, perched at the open-air doorway. By the downward tilt of his head, stone motionless expression, and half-closed eyes, I imagined him surely to be deep in thought. But about what … the task ahead, who he was meeting, his future, or perhaps regrets for deeds done? If my Spanish was up to snuff, I would have offered a peso, or better yet a valued tourist CUC, for his thoughts. Instead I remained focused on his demeanor, continuously searching for clues and imagining scenarios. In the last moments before docking, I emerged from my trance, moved camera into place as I am accustomed to doing, and recorded an image to at least capture the essence of moments we anonymously just shared.

Epilogue: Less than two weeks after that bay crossing, the US announced an end to five-plus decades of embargo, signaling resumption of diplomatic ties with Castro’s Cuba. There would now be much more for that guy, and all Cubans, to ponder … for Americans as well.

Return to the web site for viewing David's portfolio of Photo Galleries and Essays.