The streets of Havana are full of American (and other) cars from before the Cuban revolution in 1959. It’s said that most have had their motors replaced with Japanese engines, but the old car bodies have been lovingly maintained. We took a ride in a convertible one evening!
In Havana, laundry hung from every balcony like flags of humanity.
While in Cuba, we had the pleasure of watching a modern dance troupe in rehearsal. What a treat! They were a fantastic, incredibly talent group of young men and women. The dancers did an elaborate warm-up and then launched into a performance piece, with excellent live drumming. I was busy being mesmerized, while my husband Rob took these photos.
We were really struck by the expressive and engaging people in Cuba. On a popular tourist street in Havana, Polly Doll met her match with this character dressed up as a washer woman. Of course, it’s easy to feel like a repressed New Englander anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, especially in a Latin culture. With the exception of the cigar smoking newspaper seller, the people we encountered while waking around the city loved having their photo taken. Around every corner, there was someone interesting to see!
In Havana, people seem to spend a lot of time looking out at the world from their balconies. In this series of photos from our recent trip, you can get a glimpse of the former elegance of the buildings, which even in their rundown condition, are filled with character and beauty.
We’re back from our trip to Cuba, with a couple thousand photos to comb through. A photographer’s dream, Cuba is a complicated country, full of life and longing. In Havana, I felt that I was walking around in the middle of a post-apocalyptic Fellini film set.
You may wonder how we, as Americans, were allowed to enter Cuba. For the past few years, the embargo has been loosened enough so that educational groups can travel with person-to-person visas. We went with a tour organized by the Marine Biological Laboratory here in Woods Hole. More and more educational institutions are offering tours to Cuba, which I heartily recommend!
This group of photos is a sampling of more to come. I’ll be posting photos in different categories like doors, streets, people, vendors, laundry, balconies, etc.
I took some photos of gates last week, while looking for shots in the fog. These first 2 aren’t so foggy, but they got me looking through my image files for other gates.
This one of a garden gate was taken in France a few years ago.
And this one is the entrance to my friends Kathy and Ray’s house.
Here’s a tranquil spot in New England.
In hilly San Francisco.
I took the next 2 photos in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard. These properties looked a bit too perfect for me.
And 2 from historic Rt. 6A on Cape Cod.
It’s relatively warm today (in the 40’s), but the snowy ground and ocean water are still chilly. Sometimes that combination creates a thick fog and today it lured us outside. After lunch, Rob and I grabbed our cameras and drove around Quisset and Woods Hole to take photos. This section shows another view of our seaside village, from a floating dingy surrounded by ice to the dormant communal garden behind Challenger House. Even in winter, Nobska light’s fog horn sends a warning out to sea.
Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve got almost everything for the new Felt Wee Folk compiled and ready to send off to C&T publishing by the March deadline. Rob and I keep thinking of more still life setups to photograph, so I predict we’ll be busy adding finishing touches up ’til the last minute. This scene in the light box shows an array of project materials, along with a helpful cast of characters doing laundry.
Rob and I are spending every spare moment in my studio, taking photographs for the revised edition of Felt Wee Folk. We need hundreds of pictures for the new book and we’re making good progress! There’s barely enough room for all of light stands, wires and equipment. The light box creates an even, pleasing light, so once it was set up, we spent a few days taking overhead shots of the dolls and step-by-step samples. I just started writing the new chapters and directions, which I find requires a different kind of discipline than stitching. So, if I don’t post for a while, I may be absorbed into the world of words, telling instead of showing. 
We have another, larger light box that is good for the scenes. We’ve been taking pictures of the dolls all grouped together in a crowd, thinking that it would make a good book cover photo. Rob raised the tripod up really high to get the right angle. I wish you could see their little faces all looking up and waving, but that’ll have to wait until the book comes out in 2015.
Update: See the book here.
SALLEY MAVOR 