Graciela

Graciela was for many years an institution in Old Havana. Always dressed beautifully, a cigar clamped between her teeth, a grin at the ready. A witness to the Cuban revolution and 50 years of a new era.

James Sparshatt went to Cuba in 1999 and was so taken with the island and its people that he returned 15 times in the following 7 years. His images are largely of the music and dance and innate rhythm of the island but he also found himself drawn to an older generation that had been old enough to understand the revolution in 1959, that lived through 40 years of tumultuous and often difficult times and who now watch with some bemusement the return of the outside world in wave upon wave of tourists.

James Sparshatt’s photographs of the “Revolutionary” generation of Cubans capture their grit and indominatable spirit.