Walker Evans: Havana 1933

Walker Evans set out for Cuba in 1933, ostensibly to illustrate Carleton Beals’ book The Crime of Cuba – although Evans claimed not to have read a word of the book before starting to take his pictures. For three weeks, he found himself face to face with the full range of life in a tropical city already on the brink of revolution – and with the reality of a social and political situation of which he had been previously unaware. Between visits to Ernest Hemingway – who befriended him – the 29-year-old Evans wandered the streets and rural suburbs of Havana, with both the enthusiasm and the sense of distance peculiar to a photographer who could distil the essence of the world before him without destroying the intensity of the moment.