Havana Cathedral Facade and Portico, Plaza de la Catedral, 1950s

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Havana Cathedral Facade and Portico, Plaza de la Catedral, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Havana Cathedral Facade and Portico, Plaza de la Catedral, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-3B2EF0

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Sometime in the 1950s, a tourist stood in the shaded portico of a colonial arcade on the Plaza de la Catedral in Havana and pointed a camera at the baroque facade of the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception, which the Jesuits began building in 1748 and which has been slowly winning its argument with the tropical climate ever since. The deeply carved stone saints in their niches have been presiding over this square for two centuries, entirely indifferent to whoever happens to be governing the island, a quality that would prove useful. Somewhere at the base of the cathedral steps, a lone figure sits in the shade — the only human being in frame who appears to have correctly assessed the afternoon — while the cobblestoned plaza stretches out empty in the hard midday sun, the kind of light that discourages ideology and encourages sitting still. Cuba in the 1950s was a place foreigners visited with great confidence about what it was, shortly before it became something else entirely, and this quiet square on a slow afternoon is the last version of that city that most of those visitors ever got to see.

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