"I think Surrealism is very poetic, and perhaps for that reason my work has something of a mystical feeling."
Raúl Cañibano (b. 1961, Cuba) lives and works in Havana. Entirely self-taught, Cañibano’s large, open-ended photographic essays explore the complexity of urban and rural life in Cuba. Taking an anthropological approach, he documents a way of life that he believes will soon vanish. Having travelled extensively across the country, often living with his subjects for months at a time, Cañibano offers an intimate and nuanced perspective on the island's identity. A surrealist sensibility is evident in his playful use of scale, often contrasting uncannily close-up subjects with distant figures to evoke mysterious affinities and tensions.
His first solo exhibition, Lonely Hunter, took place in 1993 at the Fototeca de Cuba in Havana. Since then his photographs have been exhibited internationally in Mexico, Canada, Brazil, the US, Spain, Greece, Italy, Belgium, and Japan. In 1999 he won the Grand Prix in the Cuban National Photography Exhibit for his project on the life of rural workers, Tierra Guajira. He was one of eleven photographers selected for the Cuba, Si! retrospective of 50 years of Cuban photography at the Royal National Theatre in London in 2000. His work is part of the International Center of Photography's collection in New York.
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