In early summer 2015, Havana was a city in transition on several fronts. Six months earlier, Barack Obama and Raúl Castro stunned the hemisphere by announcing the restoration of diplomatic relations after more than fifty years of estrangement — a rapprochement that was still taking shape in practice.
The two nations' embassies would not officially reopen until that July, and Obama's visit to the island was still nearly a year away. Although restrictions had begun to ease, the embargo remained firmly in place. Still, there was a growing sense that an era was coming to an end. In May 2015, Havana began hosting the 12th Havana Biennial, titled “Between the Idea and the Experience,” a citywide event that brought art out of galleries and into the fabric of everyday life. More than 200 artists from over 40 countries participated, with works appearing in plazas, fortresses, neighborhoods, and along the Malecón. Havana was at a turning point. As Cuba began opening itself to the world, the city’s limited arts infrastructure strained to accommodate an influx of international artists and attention. Vintage American cars still traveled the streets, not as objects of nostalgia but out of necessity. Grand colonial facades buckled under the salt air and decades of neglect. Their future seemed more certain to outsiders than to the Cubans living behind them. Fidel Castro, out of office, remained a living presence in the city rather than a historical one.
These eight photographs were made where those political and artistic transitions overlapped. A statue of Christ looks out over the harbor beneath a bruised sky. Straw-thatched umbrellas line a public beach, blurring the line between art and everyday life. A weathered door stands beside a rusted oil drum stenciled with a single word—Castrol—turning a found object into an accidental monument. Fishermen stand shoulder to shoulder along the Malecón, fishing from the same seawall that doubles as an open-air gallery. A narrow lane lined with mint-green tenements remains a bastion of daily life, undisturbed by the growing presence of artists and cameras. Havana Summer 2015 moves between architecture and people, between the grandeur of decay and an unremarkable Tuesday, capturing both as authentic expressions of the city’s character. The work is observational rather than journalistic—patient and attentive to the light, color, and texture of a city forced to endure rather than renew itself.
Van Urfalian grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from ArtCenter College of Design’s photography program in 1999. He has worked as a photographer, cinematographer, and creative director for entertainment studios and global brands, building his career around the idea that a picture's job is to tell a story. Havana Summer 2015 is both a departure from and an extension of that commercial practice—the same instinct for composition and narrative applied without a client or brief. This marks the first public showcase of Havana Summer 2015, a series photographed more than a decade ago. Van plans to exhibit more photographs over the coming year. His eventual goal is to collect the complete body of work in a book.
