El Muro: The Wall / Eduardo Hernández Santos, Steven Daiber

Identifier:FA.B83.1263

Dimensions:[15] leaves (chiefly folded) : chiefly b&w ill. ; 23 x 35 cm.

Creation dates:2009

Subjects: documentary photography, gender issues, homosexuality, spiral bindings

Description:A collection of 10 offset triptych photographs and 2 bilingual essays by the artist and the Cuban ethnographer Abel Sierra. The photographs and text are printed on Shine, luminous mica coated, acid free paper. Three sheets of translucent magenta paper separate the photographs and essays. El Muro is 9″ x 13.5″ opening to 20″. The structure of the book is semi-concealed wire-o binding serving the original triptych photographs.

"A series of ten photographic triptychs by Cuban artist Eduardo Hernández Santos (born 1966). In 2005, Santos discovered that a block of the Malecon, the five-mile sea wall extending from Old to Central Havana, had been claimed as a place where gay and transgender Cubans congregated on a nightly basis. He photographed at El Muro (the wall) over the next year, engaging in discussions with his subjects, many of whom had no other public social outlet to express this aspect of their identities...Each triptych includes two images of the wall itself flanking a portrait of people at El Muro. On each left-hand image, the artist has spelled out fragments from the "La isla en peso (The Island Burden)" a poem written in 1943 by Virgilio Pinera, a gay Cuban writer (1912-1979)." - from http://www.smith.edu/artmuseum/On-View/Past-Exhibitions/El-Muro