René Burri - Cuba Y Cuba

Book excerpt: Smithsonian Institution Press is pleased to join Motta Fotografia, one of Europe's foremost publishers of photography, in presenting a series showcasing the work of postwar masters. Each book includes more than forty duotone or color images and represents an original approach to a particular theme by one of the century's finest documentary or fine-art photographers. Reports of poverty and waves of refugees have given most Americans the impression that contemporary Cuba is paralyzed by communist austerity and drained by economic isolation. Yet in Cuba y Cuba, Rene Burri, a Swiss-born documentary photographer who has turned his lens on the island since the early 1960s, records a people emanating quiet pride even as they wait for change.