This month, two photography exhibitions focusing on Cuba before, during, and after the Revolution are on view in New York City. The first, Constantino Arias, opened last week at the Center for Cuban Studies; the second, Cuba in Revolution, opens this Friday, September 24 at the International Center of Photography. With that in mind, we asked Grethel Morell, a Havana-based historian of Cuban photography, for an overview of foreign photographers and their work in documenting the early years of the Revolution. The first installment appears below, with the second to be published tomorrow. Morell’s essay appears courtesy of the Cuban network Cubarte.

The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 was an important historical event that commanded the attention of the world. Famous foreign photojournalists and members of the mainstream media were captivated by the struggle of the Cuban people against Fulgencio Batista´s dictatorship and the radical changes brought about by the Revolution. Journalists, photographers, editors, and filmmakers—progressive or not—were interested in what was happening on the island.

This attention began in the years when Fidel Castro and his comrades first started the struggle to free Cuba from the Batista dictatorship. At that time, several journalists travelled to Cuba to discover a reality that had been distorted in the media, both on the island and abroad. In 1957, American journalist Herbert Matthews, then a New York Times correspondent, was the first to climb the Sierra Maestra Mountains for a closer look at the revolutionaries in their encampment.

In April of that year, Bob Taber, an American journalist for the CBS television network, did the same, accompanied by cameraman Wendell Hoffman. With footage shot in the Pico Turquino mountains, they made the documentary Rebels of the Sierra Maestra: The Story of Cuba's Jungle Fighters. Taber also sold many still photos to the American magazine Life, and some appeared in Bohemia magazine in May 1957. That month, Hungarian journalist and photographer Andrew Saint George—himself experienced in the field of espionage—climbed the Sierra Maestra as a reporter for Look magazine. Making several visits to the rebel camps through early 1958, Saint George published his photos of rebel leaders in Look and also in the U.S. magazine Coronet (February 1958).

In June, 1957, Spanish journalist Enrique Meneses, Jr. arrived in Cuba, sent by the magazine Paris-Match. However, he could not reach the Sierra Maestra until the turn of 1958. In March, before being expelled from the island, Meneses sent photos to Bohemia, where he published “The Sierra Maestra Mission." Carlos Maria Gutierrez also reported on the Cuban situation early in 1958 for the Uruguayan newspaper La Mañana. Between March and April, 1958, Ecuadorean correspondent Carlos Bastidas, sent by the Guayaquil newspaper El Telegraph, took photos in the heart of the guerrilla camps. Such images remained in the care of the then-Ecuadorian ambassador to Havana, just before Bastidas was killed on the eve of his departure.

In the 1960s, foreign publications and photojournalists converged on Cuba with a common purpose: to report on the new government. But while their intentions were similar, the perspectives varied. These visitors left behind a legacy of imagery that influenced national photographic production in terms of subtle nuances: emphasizing concepts rather than information, conveying content rather than illustrating preconceived positions or denunciations.

During the period ranging from Henri Cartier Bresson´s second visit to Havana for Life magazine in 1963 through the end of Swiss photographer Luc Chessex´s thirteen-year Cuban sojourn iin 1974, photographic approaches and doctrines fluctuated. Such influences were evident in the work of visiting photographers, whether they were newcomers on assignment for only a few days or more seasoned reporters on the Cuban scene. Swiss photographer René Burri was in the country only twenty days in January, 1963, sent by Look magazine, while French photojournalist Marc Riboud arrived the same year as a member of the Magnum photo agency. Interestingly, in terms of foreign reportage1963 was a most ‘seductive’ year, with many publications sending reporters and photojournalists to Cuba.

All of them took home a bit of the island, where they found no lack of photographic subjects: everyday Cuban citizens, Havana street life, and of course, the Cuban leader, whom foreign photojournalists—unlike local photographers—pictured in a range of ways. For Cuban photographers images were released and distributed differently than for their foreign counterparts; as a result, the depiction of political leaders and their impact on Cuban society, and Fidel and his public persona, was approached by differently by foreign photographers. In the foreword to his book Le visage de la Revolution, Luc Chessex wrote:

“The Cuban government didn’t release an official image of Fidel Castro. In 1962 Fidel openly discussed the problem of the personality cult and declared his willingness to counter it vigorously. But the proliferation of Fidel’s image is a phenomenon that would be absolutely futile to counteract by administrative measures. If people display the portraits of their heroes, Camilo, Ché, Fidel, in the most diverse and unpredictable places, spontaneously, it is just because this is the simplest, more evident way of showing their support and firmness against a foreign threat, their enthusiasm toward the patient construction of a ‘new man.’ And Fidel is his first embodiment, symbolic and provisional.”

Tomorrow: Part Two of Morell’s essay, continuing the discussion of Cuba in the 1960s and ’70s.