page_title: Michael Dweck
section_title: Habana Libre
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Dweck / Visual artist / Habana Libre
caption_attribution_description: This is a free-licensed photograph of Michael Dweck standing in front of the his photographs "Giselle and Rachel" and "Legs" during an exhibit of his Habana Libre series at Miami's Art Basel gallery in December 2012.
context_page_description: Michael Dweck is an American visual artist and filmmaker. Best known for his narrative photography, Dweck's work "explores ongoing struggles between identity and adaptation in endangered societal enclaves." In 2003, he became the first living photographer to have a solo exhibition at Sotheby's, and in 2012, he was the first American photographer to exhibit his work in Cuba since the beginning of the United States embargo in 1960.
  He lives and works in New York City and in Montauk, New York.
  Born in 1957 in Brooklyn, Dweck grew up in Bellmore, Long Island, attending John F. Kennedy High School and then Brooklyn's Pratt Institute to study architecture, communication and fine arts. Upon graduation, Dweck founded Michael Dweck & Co., later known as Dweck & Campbell, winning a number of advertising industry awards before closing the firm in 2001 to pursue his artistic interests. Over the next decade, Dweck built a substantial reputation in fine art photography with works including The End: Montauk, N.Y.
context_section_description: Dweck's third book, Habana Libre ("Free Havana"), was published by Damiani editore and depicted the glamorous lives of what Dweck called Cuba's "privileged creative class." The book includes the first published photographs of and interviews with Alejandro Castro and Camilo Guevara, sons of Cuba's founding revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevara who are also photographers. Other subjects of the book include musicians Francis de Rio and Kelvis Ochoa, painters Rene Francisco, Rachel Valdez and Carlos Quintana, dancer Yaday Ponce Toscano and novelist Leonardo Padura.
  Upon Dweck's first visit to Havana in 2009, the New York Times' Guy Trebay quotes Dweck recalling, "I expected all the crumbling buildings and used cars, the usual clichés." Instead, on the very first night of his stay, he was invited to a party where he was introduced to a farándula, or social circle, of Cuba's idle elites, the members of which had access to expensive gadgets such as iPhones and regularly held cocktail parties and staged fashion shows.
  Writing for Spain's El País, exiled Cuban poet and essayist Antonio José Ponte observed that these children of revolutionaries had departed from the discretion of previous generations, who'd felt obliged to hide their relative wealth in a political environment of egalitarianism and asceticism, and interpreted their surprising willingness to reveal their lifestyles to an American photographer as a reaction against the constraints of Cuba's Communist Party. The Miami New Times's Kyle Munzenrieder commented that "it's hard to tell if [Dweck is] glamorizing the privilege or slyly exposing the hypocrisy of the myth of communist equality". A pictorial titled "Elit Küba" appeared in the Turkish magazine Tempo.
  New York's Staley-Wise Gallery opened an exhibit of Dweck's work to date, Habana Libre and The End: Montauk, N.Y., to coincide with the release of the Habana Libre book on December 9, 2011. Dweck drew parallels between elite Havana and Montauk, observing, "Here are two worldly paradises, both built-up in the 50s and preserved since – for better or worse; both populated by insular groups in some kind of isolation, whether it's self or externally imposed; both beset by threats from without and by new hierarchies from within." Dweck's exhibit at Staley-Wise ran through late January 2012.
  Starting February 24 and running through March 24, 2012, Habana Libre was exhibited in Havana's Fototeca de Cuba museum, making Dweck the first American contemporary artist to mount a solo exhibition in Cuba since the US embargo on that country began. Expecting around 300 guests, upon his arrival Dweck instead found himself greeted by around 2,000 artists, diplomats and journalists waiting to enter the exhibit. Later that evening, Alex Castro and Camilo Guevara headed upstairs under armed guard to view their own images as Dweck had captured them. Another of Fidel Castro's sons, Alejandro Castro, was to quip, "Thanks for making me famous"
  The exhibition showcased photographs from the book rebuilt to a larger scale using an unconventional variety of paper and a printing technique created specifically for the venue. Dweck said, "I've been given the honor of being one of the first living American artists to exhibit in Cuba, I felt I had to present something additional as a show of respect and gratitude. The unique motif is meant to honor the beauty of the island's past, reflect the heat of the people and serves as a reflection of their spirit, their future, their potential." Following the exhibition, Dweck donated all 52 photographs, then valued at around $500,000, to the Fototeca de Cuba.
  In late January 2014, selections from Habana Libre were exhibited at Art Palm Beach in West Palm Beach, Florida, with photographer and critic Elin Spring characterizing Dweck's black and white gelatin silver prints as “positively electric.”
  From September 2017 to March 2018, Dweck's work from Habana Libre appeared in Cuba IS, a multimedia exhibit exploring life in modern Cuba, at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City. Los Angeles. Ba
caption: Dweck standing with "Giselle and Rachel" and "Legs" during an exhibit of Habana Libre at Miami Beach's Art Basel in December 2012
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