Reflections
At first glance, this photograph almost feels cheerful.
The pastel buildings catch your eye. The old cars hint at another era. A high school student in her bright yellow uniform walks home as if it were any other afternoon.
Then your eyes begin to wander.
Overflowing dumpsters.
Construction debris.
Broken pavement.
Aging buildings.
The further you look down the street, the more the beauty begins to compete with the neglect.
Our guide explained that the garbage hadn't been collected for nearly a month. There simply wasn't enough money in the government's budget to operate sanitation services that month. For the people who lived here, it wasn't an extraordinary event. It was simply another part of daily life.
The student became the photograph for me.
She wasn't walking through street trash. She was simply walking home from school.
She represented hope, innocence, and the future, while everything surrounding her spoke of systems that had quietly stopped working.
The remarkable thing about Havana is that both realities exist in the same frame.
It is breathtakingly beautiful.
It is heartbreakingly worn.
Neither truth cancels out the other.