Search

Close-ups of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the press conference held at the Hotel Nacional in the first days of their visit to Cuba. See also Prints 43, 44 and 48.

Top frames document a student rally on the Escalinata (entrance steps) of the University of Havana. Probably taken in November of 1959 when the university was undergoing the first phase of revolutionary reforms that would initially purge all professors with a history of batistiano allegiance from the campus and eventually end the autonomy of the university from state intervention by the fall of the following year. Fidel Castro was the featured speaker. Bottom frames show visiting French intellectuals Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre as they greet Cubans poolside at the Hotel Nacional, March 1960. See also Prints 31, 36, 38 for the student rally; for images of the Sartre and de Beauvoir visit, see also Prints 43, 44 and 47.

Images of a trial for counterrevolutionary crimes conducted by a Revolutionary Tribunal in Havana. All witnesses, accused and judicial officials unidentified. See Print 55.

Images of the bride Emma Castro and groom Victor Lomerdi Delgado exchanging vows and kissing during the Catholic wedding ceremony. Ramón Castro is shown in close-up, standing, and Lina Ruz González is shown sitting with an unidentified man and a woman who is probably her sister-in-law and a paternal aunt of the Castro children.

Images of a couple of foreign tourists gambling at an opulently decorated casino, probably located at the Hotel Nacional. The male tourist is wearing a fake beard, apparently as a public affront to the revolutionaries then in power. See also Prints 52, 53, 55, 56, 61 and 62.

Images taken of several businesses in Havana's Barrio Chino, or Chinese quarter, probably in early 1960. Top frames show street peddlers selling books and oranges on la Calle Zanja, or Zanja street. The second and third sets of frames show a typographers' workshop and a Chinese herb and medicine shop. The fourth set of frames shows the offices of unidentified business in which three Cubans, one Chinese, one creole white and one mulatto, as well as a young creole white office boy, attend to a visiting foreigner, possibly Jay Mallin, a reporter who often accompanied the photographer.

Images of several black Cuban boys watching events inside a Havana restaurant called "El Arabe," probably located in Habana Vieja. Street children abounded in this area of the capital during the 1950s and were a frequent subject of foreign travel and journalistic accounts.

Top frames depict proceedings at a Revolutionary Tribunal after they were recommissioned in the fall of 1959 by decree of Fidel Castro. All witnesses, accused and judicial officials unidentified. Bottom frames depict foreign tourists gambling at a casino, probably located at the Hotel Nacional. For more images of this Revolutionary Tribunal, see Print 49; for more images of gamblers, see Prints 51, 52, 53, 56, 61, 62.

Images of foreign tourists gambling at two different casinos; the top frames were probably taken at the Hotel Nacional while the bottom frames were taken at the Havana Hilton. Very bottom-most frame (corner) shows signs for gamblers indicating that the U.S. dollar and the Cuban peso still traded at exactly a 1:1 rate; players were asked to use one or the other but not both. See also Prints 51, 52, 53, 55, 61 and 62.

Images of crowds of Cubans waiting at an apparent police check point set up at the Rotonda de Marianao, an obelisk marking Havana's city limits with the adjacent city of Marianao. The obelisk honors the achievements of Cuban scientist Carlos J. Finlay, the discoverer of the cause of yellow fever, and takes the shape of a giant needle. The columned building in the background of several images is the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes "San Alejandro," one of the hemisphere's oldest schools of art, founded in 1818.