I Was Cuba

I had the rare pleasure of interviewing Ramiro Fernandez, a Cuban Native, who has been part of the HNY Community for the past five years.

Ramiro Fernandez was born in Havana to a family involved in the pharmaceutical industry.  He left Cuba in 1960, settling first in Palm Beach County and then in New York, where he was a photography editor at Time Inc. for 25 years.  He was involved in the launches of Entertainment Weekly and People en Español magazines, and worked at Sports Illustrated and People.  As a witness to the revolution in his youth,  Fernandez’s consuming passion has been to build a photography collection that can serve as a testament to the Cuba he remembers.  He began collecting photographs in 1981, and today the collection numbers over 3,000 works.

We discussed his life at people, his experiences in India, and more, his accomplishment in creating this incredible montage of Cuba, but together in a fabulous book titled, "I Was Cuba."  " I Was Cuba" showcases rare images from the nineteenth century through the revolutionary period, exploring the everyday and the eccentric.  Assembled over the past three decades, this never-before-seen collection spanning the 19th century to the post-revolution era is unique for its focus on the unusual and the vernacular.

This book features over 300 of the collection’s most compelling images, exploring a long hidden Cuba and examining the paradoxes of this fascinating island.