El Muro: The Wall

Florence, MA: Red Trillium Press / Aqui en la lucha, 2009. First Edition. One of a deluxe edition limited to 50 copies (this being No. 15) signed by the photographer Eduardo Hernandez Santos, with two signed original prints all housed in a gray clamshell case.

A photographic exploration of one of Havana's hidden communities. Interweaving stark photography with excerpts from Virgilio Pinera, Santos shows us the vulnerable world of these night creatures, the young gay and transgender individuals who gather at the wall. "The seafront wall is a corporal image of the city and of the nation itself, a space of cultural alternatives and negotiations. In daylight, it is the postcard of poems, movies and tourist souvenirs. In the hours preceding dawn, it becomes the Havana of the others; the city turns against itself in nights of sea salt, rum, and troubadours. Havana becomes a transvestite garmented in mortar walls showcasing outlandish, assorted events: queens of the night, street vendors, toughs, male prostitutes, and pimps who have raised themselves up to the status of signifiers of the change in this concrete wall... 'El muro' is like a palimpsest, an overlapping of noctambulist bodies, of marginal and marginalized identities bearing textual and poetic marks."

Spiral bound wrappers in a gray-and-black cloth slipcase. Fine.

[Book #126500]