Michael Dweck: Habana Libre
Dweck's contemporary collection--made possible by his inside access to the country's ascending generation - is surprisingly rich. (Lenora Jane Estes VanityFair.com)Dweck's exhilarating, seductive black and white photographs along with a visual narrative and personal interviews by William Westbrook provide a glimpse into the secret lives of one closely guarded group of friends - the underground intelligentsia who will define the countryʼs post-Castro generation. (LaLettreDeLaPhotographie.com)Dweck focuses on Havana's clandestine and seemingly carefree creative class of artists, writers and models. "Suprising to many," Westbrook asserts, "there is happiness in Cuba." Dweck shows us that the sensuous, slinky side of pre-Castro Cuba never really dissapeared; it just went underground. (Jack CragerAmerican Photo2012-03-01)Cuba--once referred to as "that unhappy island" by President John F. Kennedy--is often portrayed in a negative, faded frame, with destitute streets and abandoned American automobiles. From March 2009 to July 2010, photographer Michael Dweck aimed to capture the secret side of Castro's Communist capital, with all of its combustible energy, from the often overlooked yet alluring perspective of its artistic elite  Despite the nation's political strife and poor economic standing, Dweck's contemporary collection-made possible by his inside access to the country's ascending generation  is surprisingly rich. (Lenora Jane EstesVanity Fair2011-09-28)Michael Dweck's "Habana Libre" is a sun-baked "Who's Who" of Cuba's cultural elite. (Stephen HeymanT- The New York Times Magazine2011-09-20)Dweck's new book, Habana Libre, reveals a secretive collective of friends based in the country's capital, making work that treads a fine line between conceptual and subversive. (Editorial StaffNowness2011-08-20)The photographs reveal a Cuba typically seen only by insiders (Ann BinlotArtinfo2011-08-02)While the more intriguing pictures in a book shot in Mr. Dweck's unchallenging soft-focus black-and-white style ("I didn't want to do documentary," he said. "National Geographic can do that") are those depicting the sons of revolutionaries disporting themselves with models and smoking fat cigars, gotcha shots are not the sole surprise."Ultimately, the book is a narrative of this privileged class," Mr. Dweck said. In its pretty, almost hapless way, the book depicts a curious warp in a great historical arc. Can it be that the end point of a violent revolution fomented to create a classless society is a crop of tropical Zoolanders and privileged "It" girls? The question, though not on the agenda of "Habana Libre," threads through it all the same. (Guy TrebayThe New York Times2011-07-28)