“Violet Isle” by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb
Violet Isle © Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb
Cuba is one island, one country, that that holds the duality of both sharing the mystique of one of the most beautiful places to photograph and a society that is poised to change dramatically once the current regime evolves into a open and democratic government. Both conditions make Cuba a place of our times, a unique subject of photography, that may not remain as is for long.
Violet Isle, a project by the great Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, a true collaborative series between both photographers, is an extraordinary portrait of Cuba, the place that was, the place that it is and the place that will not be in the future. The project is being released as a photobook by Radius books (see amazon.com as well). For the lucky opnes living or visiting NYC you can find the photographs at Ricco Maresca until January 2nd, 2010.
For the book and exhibition of Violet Isle, we chose to collaborate in order to create a more complicated and multi-layered portrait of Cuba, one that explores not just the streets of this Caribbean island, but also the relationship between Cubans and the natural world.
Interweaving our work, we discovered, expanded upon our understanding of Cuba, upon the notion of an island in a kind of bubble — a political, economic, social, and ecological bubble –– the latter, which scientists now say, may protect Cuba environmentally because of the dearth of cars and plastics and other consumer goods.
This collaboration also allowed us to embrace visually and conceptually the enigma of Cuba, what Pico Iyer calls, the “ambiguous island.” – Alex Webb (source from their blog)
Violet Isle © Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb
