Kallitype & Salted Paper Prints
Eliazor lives in a poor section of greater Havana with his wife and children. I met him on my first trip to Cuba, where he hung around our group of photographers, doing little odd jobs for money to help him and his family survive. Even though he is deaf and mute, he is able to lip read and can communicate by writing. I love talking to Eliazor because he is the only Cuban I know who does not correct my bad Spanish!
He seems to have the prescience to know when we are arriving each year, as he always appears shortly after we get there. In truth I think he rides the ferry across Havana Bay every day in hopes of connecting with some tourists and earning a bit of cash.
Since the pandemic brought Cuba's tourist industry to a dead stop last spring, I have worried about my friends there since so much of the country's economy now depends on tourism. Of all of them, I worry most about Eliazor and his family, and the hunger they must feel on a daily basis right now.