HARDBACK – £30.00
(ISBN 9781914278907)
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eBook – £10.00
(ISBN 9781914278914)
“LA HORA MAGICA / THE MAGIC HOUR – A PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNEYS THROUGH CUBA”
is Hawai’i-born writer/photographer Lorenzo DeStefano’s chronicle of his coverage of Cuba between 1993 and 1998, during “El Período Especial” in modern Cuban social,
economic, and cultural history. This “special period” began in 1991, after the fall of Russian Communism, when hard times threatened
to bring the highly dependent Cuban economy and its long-suffering people to their knees.
Focused primarily on a rugged, breakdown-plagued seven-day cross-country journey in a beat up 1952 Willy’s Jeep, affectionately known as “El Jeepy”,
from Santiago to Havana, DeStefano was joined by his friend and driver Juan de Mata Montero Reyes.
Together they encounter remote villagers, urban dwellers, Santería priests, and underage prostitutes.
Lorenzo’s friendship with Juan de Mata is at the centre of this book, which covers a variety of subjects including global politics, the ethics of making art, and the rights of man.
Their road trip cements a deep, cross-cultural friendship between two men of different generations, united by their both being men from islands.
DeStefano’s text and his camera unite and inform this complex place and its resilient people. Expanding beyond the personal to a true panoramic of contemporary Cuban life,
keeping one eye on the viewfinder and the other on the reality he is photographing, DeStefano powerfully conveys his impressions, his bewilderment,
and his anxiety as an American traveling under the radar of official government permission.
