Raúl Cañibano

About a year ago, I spotlighted the work of the great Cuban photographer Raúl Cañibano (@raul_canibanofoto). I’m returning to his images today with some good news: Raul has a new book out—“Absolut Cuba”—which, hopefully, will not only allow more people to see his incredible talents but also burnish his reputation beyond Cuba, where he is already (and rightly) considered a legend. Raul, who lives in Havana, is a master of capturing action on multiple planes; that, combined with his facility for finding moments suffused with magical realism, make his pictures endlessly interesting to my eye.

The book features 100 of Raul’s energetic pictures of life in Cuba; some will be familiar to those of us who pounce on every image that pops up on his beautiful Instagram feed (@raul_canibanofoto) but also dozens and dozens that I, at least, had never seen before. The book, published by Edition Lammerhuber, is laid out simply with the photos doing the heavy lifting.

I asked Raul, whose pictures only started to be seen beyond Cuba a few years ago, how he felt, at 60, about this book now being published. “When I began photography 30 years ago, I did it as a personal necessity: The desire to reflect upon the reality in which I live as well as the fact that stopping time in an image is my best means of expression,” he told me. “To know that through this book my work can be appreciated by so many people brings me a lot of satisfaction. I believe that to know other realities helps to focus us on improving the world we live in. And I am very appreciative of having the opportunity to show part of the life of my country over my 30 years of photographic experience.”
Find the book at edition.lammerhuber.at

Bill Shapiro 2021