Habana Deco' - Duccio Malagamba;Zoé Valdés

The original impetus behind this project was the desire to document the extraordinary richness, variety, and quality of Havana’s Art Deco’ architecture. Looking back at these photographs, photographer Duccio Malagamba is still glad he made the decision to undertake that adventure, despite the fact that the result of that effort, due to a series of circumstances, lay dormant for decades in a drawer in his studio.

There is no doubt that, the documentary value of the photographs remains intact—or perhaps increased, since it is possible that over these 30 years some of the works portrayed have succumbed to successive cyclones and lack of maintenance. The valuable aesthetic and compositional charge of the images does not seem to have been compromised by the passage of time. Today, however, alongside with the worn beauty of the buildings portrayed, what captures the viewer is the life that has been encapsulated in these photographs. A life frozen in most cases accidentally.