Cuba to Ukraine: A Photographer’s Journey

By the end of June 2001, I took a photograph that the Cuban government did not like very much. The photo captured the fainting of Fidel Castro, then President of Cuba. At the time, I was working as a photojournalist for the Associated Press in Havana. I was covering what seemed like one of his “regular” speeches. Suddenly, the “comandante” collapsed on stage. I managed to take a couple of shots, published them. In return earned myself a stern warning—half reprimand, half threat—from state security officials. My editor granted me what she called “indefinite vacation,” telling me simply, “Leave until this blows over.” So, with that, I packed my bags and set out on a journey to Ukraine.

One of the photos I took of Fidel Castro that Cuban government didn’t really like. Havana, Cuba, June of 2001.

I set off on my journey to Ukraine. I carried only a Leica M4-P with my beloved 28 mm lens. I also had a dozen rolls of Kodak Tri-X film. I wandered through several cities and small towns. In one of them, quite unexpectedly, I stumbled upon the celebration of Ukraine’s Independence Day.

A woman prays in the cemetery of Ivano-Frankivsk during Ukraine’s Independence Day celebration on August 24, 2001.

At that time, I knew the former Soviet Union had collapsed. I knew the republics had gone their separate ways. But the very idea of “Independence” caught me off guard—and it was, for me, a pleasant surprise. Imagine, I had just come from Cuba. There, words like Independence, Freedom, and Autonomy were nothing more than tools of communist propaganda. They were slogans advertising an ideal system that, in truth, never really existed.

Unfortunately, that day my supply of film ran out, and I shot the remaining 12 frames in that cemetery.

War veterans and their families gathered in the cemetery of Ivano-Frankivsk during Ukraine’s Independence Day celebration on August 24, 2001.

And so revealed itself the so-called “Murphy’s Law,” that old saying: “If anything can go wrong, it will.” Just when a situation becomes most interesting—that’s exactly when the rolls of film run out!

Now, 34 years later, I hold on to the hope of returning to that land of wheat, steel, and technology!