2023-06-14 15:49:06
«The best images are those that retain their strength and impact through the years,
despite the number of times they are viewed»
Anne Geddes
I had heard of Roberto Salas and knew many of his photographs, but I had never even seen him in portraits. One afternoon we met at the José Martí Memorial in a cultural activity. When we saw each other, we greeted each other as if we had known each other for a lifetime. I remember he told me namesake, as it still does sometimes. From that moment we began a friendship that grew over time and that lasts to this day. Salitas, as he is also known in the trade, and his father Osvaldo Salas, a great lensman, together with Alberto Korda, Raúl Corrales, Liborio Noval, Ernesto Fernández and others, brilliantly captured the first years of the Cuban Revolution.
—When we took those photographs we did not even remotely think that the images were going to have historical significance. Then we did not think about posterity and the importance of photographs. We just wanted to do our day-to-day work well.
Salitas did not limit himself to documenting the Revolution and portraying its main leaders. His work extended to other genres of photography. In all of them he overflowed his talent and his creativity and gave us true works of art that have transcended time to become “images of memory”, the title of his most recent book of photographs.
The doctor in Historical Sciences Rafael Acosta de Arriba, one of the main specialists in photography of the guild of critics and academy in Cuba, referred in the prologue of the aforementioned book:
“Roberto Salas, a witness of his time, belongs to a select group of photographers (beyond that extraordinary group of epics) who have contributed to Cuban photography being considered art. Salas’s work is a polyhedral, profound and visceral portrait of Cuba. His encompassing, incisive, intelligent look and owner of an exquisitely educated sensitivity, has examined his environment with curiosity and avidity. ”
The work -in continuous evolution- of this artist, who is over 80 years old, cannot be pigeonholed into genres or specialties, since it does not become stagnant, but rather extends and exceeds the limits of any modality of photography.
“I’m still thinking about what I still have to do.” I think my guide has been a response to a phrase that my father used when someone asked him: “Salas, what is your best photograph?” And he would always say, “My best photograph? I think I’ll do it tomorrow”
It will be difficult for Salas to surpass himself, perhaps if we rummage through his archives we will find unpublished photographs as successful and expressive as those already known, but, although the years weigh heavily, Salas does not look back, so I have no doubt that at some point he will surprise us with another artistic proposal, one of those of yours that invites you to reflect and dream. If he does it, it won’t be to win applause or awards, but to satisfy his creative instincts and that incurable need to express his soul through photography.
—Salas, you started photography almost as a child. When you were born, your father was already a photographer. Did you get to photography or can it be said that photography came to you?
—I was born in New York surrounded by enlargers, trays, chemistry, photographic papers, I could almost say that I was born in the middle of a laboratory. Before the triumph of the Revolution, I had already started as a photographer thanks to my father, a photographer from head to toe. In other words, photography entered me by gravity or, let’s say, by inheritance. So, it wasn’t me who got to her, rather she was the one who got to me.
—There are photographs of you, Fidel and Che dated January 1959. How could you get close to them at such an early date? In what other moments were you able to photograph them?
—I arrived in Cuba on the first New York-Havana flight in 1959, on January 2. Fidel and the Rebels had not yet reached the capital. He then he was 18 years old. As soon as I settled down, I joined the founders of Revolution newspaper and we set up camp in the Presidential Palace. There I stayed in the darkroom of Fulgencio Batista’s photographer. I don’t remember the exact date, but it must have been January 10 or 12, when I met Fidel for the first time in Havana. I had met Fidel on one of his trips to New York in 1955. Together with my father, I collaborated with him and the July 26 movement from there. I remember that as soon as he saw me he asked me where is your father? He Is he here he or in New York? I replied that my father was still there but that he would soon come to Cuba.
“On more than one occasion I ran into him again. In one of those, while I was conversing with Che at a table in Batista’s old office, I took that photograph of him in which the flame of the match with which he lit the tobacco served as a flash, and there it is, among many others. that I was able to take Fidel and Che at different times.
“Going back to that photo, I remember that where they were talking the light was very dim, so much so that you could barely see their faces. So, I put the camera at will, I settled down to the table, and every time Fidel lit a match to light the tobacco he took advantage and took a picture of it. When I developed the negative, some photos were dark or moved, fortunately this one appeared, which was the one that remained for the story”.
“What came next?”
—I stayed working with Fidel. I covered his first trip to Venezuela, then I traveled with him when he went to the United States, to Washington and New York. Then to Argentina, to Brazil, to Uruguay. In those days, mainly in the United States, Fidel was the closest thing to a movie star, a figure that transcended politics. It was like saying a Robin Hood. Wherever he went, he was a magnet. Everyone wanted to see him, greet him, tell him something, and all the press behind him.
“I also photographed Che, but Che was not easy, all of us in one way or another photographed him and we all thought the same thing. But I have a theory: Che liked to take photographs, and since Che felt like a photographer, it seems to me that there was something there, that he did not like being photographed very much because he was a photographer.
—What role did those young photographers who met at Revolution newspaper play to record the revolutionary effervescence of those years?
—A group of photographers met at Revolution newspaper, whom they later baptized with the title “Epic Photographers.” Our main weapon was the small format 35mm camera. We photographed with ambient light, without flash or artificial lights of any kind. I remember that entire pages were filled with images, knowing that almost 50 percent of the population was illiterate or semi-literate, and it was necessary to show what was happening in the country through images.
“The texts were very brief so that the message could reach the vast majority. It can be said that we revolutionized the concept of press image.
“Over time, some of those images became symbols. And we weren’t the photographers or the journalists who exalted them, they themselves gained value according to the impact they had on people”.
—I don’t intend to summarize an artistic career spanning as many years as yours in an interview, but I would like you to tell me about your work after those years of revolutionary effervescence.
—Since I started as a photographer until today, I have ventured into various photographic genres: journalistic, documentary, contemporary, fashion, nude, advertising photography. There are my photographic essays: The last council of Regla (1961); Tomb-bembé-batá (1963); Vietnam, (1966-73); Nudes, 1994-2004; This is how Cubans are, 2007-2015 and Nostalgias, 2009-2019, in which I group a significant part of my post-Epic work, which has undoubtedly been the most recognized of all my work.
“I can also tell you that all the photographs that I was able to take in my life, I did from my own perspective and intention. All the time I was looking for what was different, what was new, what could be attractive and impressive. It is not for me to say if I succeeded or not. There are my photographs, let them speak for me”.
—More than sixty years after your beginnings as a professional photographer, what is your greatest satisfaction? What do you feel when you look back?
—I feel great satisfaction for having done, until today, what I could and wanted to do, and for that, I thank life.
It has been more than 60 years of work. There is the work, our mark in the history of Cuban photography. In my case, I can tell you that I don’t have diplomas, medals, decorations, anything like that.
“My greatest satisfaction is summed up in what Fidel told us in a conversation he had in his office with several of us: Korda, Corrales, Liborio and me, a dialogue that was documented by the Chicano filmmaker Héctor Cruz Sandoval and you. And I quote: “One begins to understand the value of those photos as the years go by. I say that thanks to you we exist. Without your photos we wouldn’t even exist.” That was what Fidel said. Do you want a bigger prize than that?
When I look back, I feel the satisfaction of having fulfilled my duty, for having been lucky enough to be able to leave a mark of my work in my transit through life. Although if there is something that this life taught me, it is to always look forward.
ROBERTO SALAS IMAGE GALLERY
Cover image: Roberto Salas. Photo: Roberto Chile.
#Roberto #Salas #ahead