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Home - Art
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Havana Bound
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Photographer Hendrickson as resourceful as subject matter in Cuba
by Michael J. Krainak
Chances are if you trade your latest vacation snapshots with those of Jim Hendrickson you are going to notice a big difference. Instead of glitzy, postcard photographs of sunsets, infinity pools and mountain vistas, this Omaha artist captures local color beyond the shadow of an all-inclusive resort.
Hendrickson doesn’t take vacations. He takes photos, and he takes his time. Whether it’s the other side of the tracks as with his last exhibit, The Yard, or his planned summer show at Jackson Artworks illustrating a recent sojourn to Paris, he is no tourist. Hendrickson is a vagabond, and sometimes his muse takes him on journeys into forbidden territory.
Places such as Cuba, where he’s been traveling surreptitiously since 2002. A photo record of these trips is on display in the lower level of the Old Market Passageway through March 18. Sponsored by A Moving Gallery, Cuba: Havana in the Moment Just before the Midnight features colorful portraits of people, cityscapes and ’50s automobiles.
A more fitting subtext for this eclectic display might be Havana Bound as it underscores the devastating impact America’s embargo has had since Castro’s 1960 takeover.
Hendrickson’s imagery is not overtly political, but its documentation of a city and its inhabitants fighting the good fight of survival in deference to isolated policymakers is social commentary enough.
No matter where you look in the show you are greeted with a combination of pride and humility, hospitality and hesitation, beauty and decay. The overall impression is one of a very resourceful country which lives forever in the moment, unable to move forward, shackled to its past. In spite of this, Cuba could teach the United States a thing or two about living within one’s means especially at the mercy of the embargo’s limits on trade, business and tourism.
Hendrickson clearly identifies with this existential and romantic philosophy as he requires no schedule or agenda. He calls this part doc, part narrative art “happy accidents” and simply goes about the streets of Old Havana wherever his curiosity takes him. He favors digital cameras and even the so-called plastic camera with its fixed focus and shutter, and his work usually reflects a certain disregard for refinement even when posed.
This is especially so in Cuba when Hendrickson shoots people on the streets with a story to tell beyond the obvious. In “Offering Wagon Man” his subdued lighting and casual POV capture the humility of a subject who accepts money to crawl up 100 steps to a cathedral to offer prayers of sacrifice. Less subtle and more exposed is the figure in “Drunk Young Man & New Years Day” who delivers propane to home and business. A rather Cuban icon, is he celebrating the future or merely escaping his present plight with demon rum?
“Older Woman in Front of Store” and “Three Men Pals” also depict a certain dichotomy of their own. The former portrays, in 15 degrees off center, a shopper or shop owner who stands warily in front of a store that sells Cuban staples such as beans and rice. That she hides what Hendrickson said was “a diminished supply of either” may hint at her apparent discomfort with revealing as well as living under these conditions.
“Three Men” shares this tentativeness but not in the father and son who pose proudly upfront as “pals.” Instead, upstaging this optimism is the furtive glance of a man behind them who peers from the shadows, another iconic Cuban, a building warden whose job it is to keep people and locations under scrutiny.
Speaking of locations, several photos here of buildings such as “No. 1,” “No. 5” and “No. 3” stand not only as monuments to the past, but as shadows of their former grandeur.
The buildings are silent but speak volumes about what they and their occupants must endure. A particular favorite, the aptly titled “No. 3,” features three tiers of differently designed balconies and thresholds held together by a palette of fading turquoise and weathered brown wood frame.
Yet, the most evocative series is Hendrickson’s collection of classic American cars that would not look out of place in an auto auction on cable TV if it were not for one thing. In spite of new paint jobs, they all smack of interior and exterior replacement parts rebuilt or re-designed and retro-fitted, often from scratch or scrap heap. You may think you have seen these rust-free, boldly painted Buicks, Mercurys and Chevys, but their odd variation on the “two-tone sedan” or “custom coupe” belie their authenticity if not their endurance.
These cars serve as fitting testimony to Cuba’s perseverance in prevailing hard times, but perhaps one last photo, “Light Blue Car, No. 2,” with its blacked-out windows echoing the hollowed-eyed, “abandoned” building behind it, is Hendrickson’s last “word” on an off-shore, off limits neighbor not yet out of his sight or mind.
Cuba: Havana in the Moment Just before the Midnight continues through March 18, in A Moving Gallery in the lower level of the Old Market Passageway, 1030 Howard St. For more info visit amovinggallery.org/main.html.
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