Cajón Photography in Cuba

Cuba has a great amount of wonderful curiosities. That is the case of the cajón photography, marvel that seems to be taken out from a very, very old book of stories to be shown in a century of advanced technology.

   Such a wonder has an extra value in Havana. Those people who visit its capitol have the possibility of been photographed before the staircase of this colossal building. There, some photographs are ready for taking a good picture of you with nothing less than a cajón camera.

   This device always draws the attention of foreign visitors who immediately want to be photographed for taking the picture to their countries as a souvenir of having enjoyed a sort of journey to the past without using a time machine.

   It is a real Cuban feast the fact of personally living such an experience, talking with the owners of the old cameras -real museum pieces, as well as taking a look to their good working order and the way their owners keep them alive, working.

   The photographers of this kind of cameras are a real big shot. Carrying an antique camera, they position themselves in front of the staircase of the capitol of Havana. It is an invitation for people passing by for been photographed. They also use this place because it is crowded all the time.

   Champions of the image, they seem a modern Don Quixote trying to preserve mills of light and colour in the time of cutting-edge technology, powerful plane trips among other advances of science. Nevertheless, these artists -somehow they are, succeed with their old apparatus.

   Every day more and more visitors choose this site for making new friends, for been photographed or taking some pictures with their modern digital cameras, or just for fraternizing with these photographers that try to present old cameras as an innovation whose epoch has really gone away.

   Still fresh, those times of technological introductions during the 1900-1918 intervals of various devices characterized by having springs and long legs of their tripods. At that time, these apparatuses were in vogue all over the world.

   However, people may see these devices -well preserved and real museum pieces, now in the hands of persons who most of the time do not know the history of photography. Nevertheless, they are part of it.

   Nonetheless, in Havana as well as in some other cities around the Island, cajón photography is still a luxurious activity, an artistic expression with unique features widespread with the purpose of promoting tourism using a very particular method: giving poetry.

   In general terms, cajón photographers of these days are old persons probably nostalgic for a city of streetcars, theatres showing comedies, and demure clothes in contrast with today's fashion of short clothes and almost-uncovered women.

   Such a simple person is the cajón photographer: symbol, part and counterpart of an image worth to remember or to take home. Graphic essence of the silhouette of the architecture of other times, symbol that just hides in a click!