Jerry Schatzberg: Cuba, 1959: Presented with the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival

In this never-before-exhibited series of photographs, Jerry Schatzberg transports viewers to a pivotal point in history at the end of the Cuban Revolution. Fidel Castro’s Communist Party had seized power that February, overthrowing the previous government in a widely-publicized guerrilla war. Schatzberg arrived in Havana shortly after. He wore a black suit and looked out-of-place as the first and only photographer from the United States. Castro’s bodyguards nicknamed him “El Torero,” saying he looked like a bullfighter.

 

Schatzberg was given complete freedom and access to photograph Castro and his revolutionaries during their meetings, interviews, and leisure time throughout the city of Havana. His intimate photographs provide an alternative image of the iconic yet polarizing world leader and his government, as only a photographer like Schatzberg could capture.