POST

Cuba

Tuesday May 31st, 2011

I can’t help but get excited whenever I hear one of our photographers is visiting Cuba. I grill them for details and pore over their photos. This is because my mother is from Cuba. Like many others, she and her family left when Castro came to power. I love looking at photos of Cuba—imaging her in Havana when she was young. Since the embargo makes the country off-limits to most Americans, I have not been able to visit yet. So you can imagine my delight when our Dallas photographer Trey Hill told me about his special Cuban assignment.

Last summer, Trey got an interesting call from an institutional client. They were looking for a photographer and filmmaker who could work without a support staff and had experience in limited access countries. They found what they were looking for in Trey and he was soon on his way to Havana.

Trey was extremely excited about the opportunity, not only to visit a forbidden land, but to help his client who was looking for someone to tell their story in a complex nation. The client—who must remain anonymous in order to continue with their religious work in Cuba—wanted Trey to document local pastors as they work to lead the persecuted Cuban church.

Photography Trey Hill Dallas, TX

The experience was life altering for Trey. Inspired, he put together a photo essay, Hope Amidst the Ruins, when he returned. The essay is an arresting look at a country stuck in more ways than one. Trey told me a little about his time in Cuba:

The films were the core deliverable, but the part of the project that was closest to my heart was a photo essay based on the juxtaposition of the ubiquitous decay present Cuban life and a passage from the book of Isaiah that serves as a source of great encouragement to the Cuban pastors. On more than one occasion, Cuba was described to me as a giant prison, yet, the Cuban church flourishes despite being both politically and geographically isolated from the global body of believers. And it flourishes because of the bold faith of those who live everyday choosing to cling to Isaiah 61 and not the decay right before their eyes.

Trey fell in love with Cuba, its spirit and its people. He finds it hard to put his experience into words, but luckily a picture’s worth a thousand words and Trey has plenty of those.