JENNIFER SPELMAN HAS BEEN TO CUBA 50 TIMES in the last 10 years. Fifty. She leads photography workshops on the island; her next one is in December. These trips are as much about cultural immersion as they are f-stops. As you might imagine, she’s part of a rich network of Havana artists, all of whom are part of the experience. Back home in Santa Fe, she’s a documentary photographer and a teacher at Santa Fe Workshops.
Why Cuba?
Ten years ago, I started going there with Santa Fe Workshops. Creativity is like a language in Cuba. It immediately resonated with me. The entire sense of design, how active and alive their street photography was – it was all super exciting.
It really changed the direction of my work. All of a sudden, I felt alive with my photography. You know, there are so many clichés about Cuba, but there’s also a deeper soul to it that I’m interested in. And that comes from the relationships I’ve developed there.
I’ve become friends with a lot of the artists in Cuba, and boy, are they funny. They have a beautiful sense of humor. They’re educated, they’re sharp, and they’re much more literate about art, design, color theory.
And they have a beautiful sense of watching out for one another. That sounds like something people say about a lot of places, but it’s really different there. Look at what they’ve been through in the last 63 years.
Because of that, they seem to roll with life much better than Americans. They maintain a positive disposition through everything. We could learn from that, for sure.
So you are doing a photography workshop there. What’s that like?
It’s like your most perfect day. That’s it. And we do it seven times over. I design the very best possible days full of really rich experiences. Our groups are not too large, and we meet an amazing cast of Cubans from all walks of life.
It’s actually as much experience-based as it is photography-based. The photography is sort of a by-product of the experience.
Every time I’ve gone, people on the tour don’t want to come back. When they arrive in Cuba, they’re typically all stressed out. The internet in Cuba is super hard to get on, so they quickly become disconnected from their normal reality. There’s something really healthy that comes with that.
How did you get interested in photography?
In as roundabout a way as possible. I worked with the District Attorney’s office in Colorado as an intern in investigations, as an evidence specialist. My mom worked as a crime investigator, and my plan was to join the FBI.
So I was working toward a forensics degree, and somewhere I saw an ad for Santa Fe Workshops. I went, and it was like, Oh, wait a minute, I might have a totally different life direction here. I loved it. So I shifted gears and began as a workshop assistant.
I used to do commercial work and conceptual stuff, but now I focus on documentary shooting.
To me, street photography is pure poetry. You learn to see and make these incredibly layered moments that other people just walk past. Going back to Cuba lets me put together longer stories, lets me thread pieces of that place together. This is not about just pushing stuff out on Instagram.
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Photo Jennifer Spelman
