Customer Reviews

Robert Polidori: Havana

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an extraordinarily beautiful book, extraordinarily well produced. Polidori is a graphic poet.

But then, what is it all about? No travel book, this.

There was a grand city, with grand, refined living, there was a sense of the visual, even in the simplest laying of stone upon a stone. The photographs attest to that. The grace, like the decay, is real. The rich, varied hues are real, if from fraying, unretouched paint, destined to change and pale with each passing day. Polidori's colors are not meant to be restored nor will ever there be a patina to be cleaned. Their destiny is to fade. One would like to think of this Havana as a grand opera set for a Nozze or an Ariadne where protagonists move like ghosts among the ruins, talking of betrayals, regrets and happy loves that are now merely wise. For some of us, that it is. For some of us it is the stones that are real, the peeling paint and the broken down chandeliers. People are the interlopers, people are like things, being where they do not belong. Yet in a grander sense those of us may be self-deceived. For in these pictures there is no real tension between flesh and wall. The grandiloquent decay, like an ever swelling musty velvet cape, gathers crumbling stone to unweeded garden to limpid sky to people ...... all into a deeply bundled melancholic recessional that will swallow everything and leave only moonless night behind. There is no future in this past, perhaps the most melancholy conjecture of all. It seems to me most photographs are lit by the late afternoon sun. The beauty makes one cry, we see our lives in the peeling paint and broken balustrades, the broken window frames, cracked marble, the rusted iron gates ....perhaps nowhere more than in the curious compromises of antiquated artifacts for everyday living pragmatically juxtaposed to broken down rococo splendor or dismembered bourgeois grandeur, trying to make do but never quite. This is brutally the passage of time with no attempt at cosmetic dissimulation or philosophical delay. We are all beyond reflection. Each picture seems to say unequivocally: all this has passed and all this will pass. Perhaps Havana has come to an old preordained denouement, arrived at a culmination old and forgotten, in the event, a summit, an end: Havana as a place never meant to truly be, a creature of our dreams, an incantation..... Wallace Stevens who only visited the Havana of the mind, wrote in "Academic Discourse in Havana" (1936):

"This may be benediction, sepulcher, and epitaph......
An infinite incantation of our selves
In the grand decadence of the perished swans."

Visceral images of a unique city, in which splendor and squalor are juxtaposed, and the past is suspended within the present, decaying yet enduring. Robert Polidori has captured the beauty and melancholy of Havana, gazing unflinchingly at the ruins and the people who inhabit them. When the boycott is finally lifted, all this will be swept away by a tide of new development, so try to see it now and use this wonderful book as an introduction and a lasting memento. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

These photos are breathtakingly spectacular. As soon as I saw this book, I had to buy it. It was the first time I'd ever seen anything that captures exactly what being in Cuba feels like: as if you were witnessing the beautiful ruins of a decaying Roman empire. It's the most spectacular, cinematic misery you could ever experience. And I'm glad that someone like Robert Polidori has captured it so faithfully before it all crumbles to the ground (or gets built over with hideous concrete Spanish hotels).

Looking straight into this book, the author give us a remarquable view of old houses that are still fabulous under the architectural point of view. But if you are an inteligent reader, you will discover that this book is also about how time interacts with the other times, the historical, the political, the cultural and the social. Through the photos of Polidori you can understand more about Havana than through all the literature.
The best book on Havana that I own, among more than two dozens, and the one with the more interesting angle about the history of cuban people. I know the city quite well, and I can assure you that you will be delighted with the "perfume" you get from it.

In these urban landscapes of contemporary Havana, Polidori captures on film the spectacular ruin of a vibrant culture living on faded memories of past opulence. The overwhelming feeling I got from viewing these photographs was that these people deserve so much better than this. This work is visually stunning, but it goes beyond art. It holds up a slice of the Cuban soul for the world to see and weep for.

Even in decay, the colorful bells of Havana still shine. The richness of the color and history and architecture is astounding. I purchased two copies of this book one for myself and one for a friend.

There are two principal cities in the world where time seems to stand still. One is Pripyat' Ukraine which was abandoned following the Chernobyl disaster in April, 198. In that unfortunate time literally all the people left within 24 hours. The other is Havana whose middle and upper classes departed over several decades following the Cuban Revolution mainly to live in the United States.

Unlike Pripyat' where vegetation and wildlife replaced human inhabitants, the City of Havana lives on despite its painful decay.

Robert Polidori's Havana depicts several days in the life of the city in the early years of the new century. Probably by chance, the period he photographed represented simultaneously the zenith and nadir of the Revolution. His camera details the architectural heritage of the colonial era set among the blockish facades of Socialist reality. Even as neglect defaces these urban jewels, a certain spirit shines through recalling a city whose exiles in Florida still yearn to return.

As we enter the last days of the Cuban experiment in our hemisphere, the Havana so lovingly pictured here will not endure. Buildings and homes will be restored naturally enough. But the spirit of the urban caretakers of this legacy might have been lost forever if not for Polidori's lens. This is an amazing and dreamy work that belongs to a city and people whose heritage stayed behind.

There are so many Havanas - the city of enduring propagandists, the city of opportunistic tourist hawks, the city of irrepressible enthusiasts, and the city of melancholy preeners. Polidori takes on the last of these and does a beautiful job of showing splendor glimpsed through weary eyes - dilapidated buildings that beg to be honored again after many years of noble, yet thankless service; vintage autos standing like senile guards before crumbling facades; paint deprived, yet elegant interiors that suggest any number of richly layered stories. It's all here. And it makes you both nostalgic and hopeful. How often can you stand on a seam of history, seeing the past, the present and a possible future all at once? Then why not five stars? Polidori spends a bit too much time in each location. I don't really need to see every room in someone's house to get a feel for it....especially if that means there will be other locations that I don't get to see at all. Public places are presented on the sidelines (by design), but I don't believe that that was the best strategy. Public places are more than mere architecuture - they too have stories to tell, moods to convey, dreams to share. I wish Mr Polidori would offer a website to owners of his book who wish to see the other photos that did not make the cut for publication. Then, the journey would feel more complete.

Being Cuban American and having visited Havana numerous times as well as having the opportunity to actually see firsthand, many of these grand interiors Polidori so eloquently displays for all to page through and imagine the events that have transpired in these interiors. The joys, the struggles, the rise and fall of a culture with all it's social graces. This book captures what I captured with my own eyes passing through those marvelous mansions of Cuba's golden age. Havana is truly a Paris of the Caribbean, although decayed and damaged, she is still beautiful, graceful and inspirational to all who visit her. Thus the term "Havana-itis", a disease thought to befall visitors who fall instantly in love with the grand ole dame. I believe there is still hope for her to be restored to her rightful brilliance one day, If only the current government would allow it.

Knowing that I will never be able to travel to Havana I wanted to get some idea of the city. I especially appreciated the facing pages that showed the building in disrepair and then after having been restored.

The colors used in both interiors and exteriors are generally beautiful. The photos many times seem more like paintings.

The book has exterior shots, interior shots and portraits of residents of the city. I would have appreciated more context. Did the lady of the house always live there? Were all those books hers? Or were they left by a previous occupant?

How was it possible for some residents to maintain their homes so beautifully in spite of the Cuban economic difficulties?

I especially noticed that the tradional architecture was so much more graceful and beautiful than the huge hotel overshadowing everything. Is that the future of Havana? More huge tourist hotels looming above the old city and the people?


Actually, the whole sad story of the decay of beauty reminded me of Detroit.