Ongoing project · Cuba · 2022 —
Surviving the Impossible
Sobreviviendo a lo imposible
There's just one place to live: the impossible. Reinaldo Arenas
Surviving the Impossible is an ongoing documentary project developed in Cuba since 2022, built through repeated visits, time, and relationships of trust with people who have allowed me into their everyday lives.
Cuba is one of the most photographed countries in the world, and one of the most misread. The images that circulate tend to confirm what viewers already expect: a place frozen in time, or a place of poverty redeemed by resilience and warmth. Neither does justice to the complexity of what is happening there, nor to the people living it.
This project starts from a refusal to repeat that. It stays closer to how daily life is actually negotiated: the practical decisions, the relationships, the improvisation that existence requires under conditions that, from the outside, can seem simply impossible. The situation in Cuba is not simple, and the work does not try to make it so.
The people in these photographs are not symbols. They hold contradictions: strength and exhaustion, tenderness and scarcity, certainty and doubt. What I am trying to register is not a single story but the friction between all of them.
This is also a collaborative project, shaped as much by the relationships it depends on as by the images it produces. What that asks, above all, is attention to the lives in front of the camera rather than the story behind them.
Interior of a bicitaxi repair workshop in Havana, November 2024. A portrait of Che Guevara hangs on the wall above cracked surfaces and worn tools — an image still common in many Cuban workspaces.
Bicycle taxis are among the most common forms of short-distance transport in Cuban cities; the workshops that sustain them rarely have the infrastructure their workers need.
A man passes an idled classic car on a Havana street, July 2023.
Chronic fuel shortages have left many vehicles permanently off the road. Spare parts are scarce and often unaffordable; repairs depend on what can be improvised, or on what relatives abroad manage to send.
A baker waits behind the counter of a state-run bakery in Old Havana, July 2022.
Food shortages have severely limited the availability of basic staples. Until a few years ago, many bakeries offered a wider range of products; today, bread is often the only item available.
A teacher attends to her students at the end of a school day in Havana.
Cuba faces a severe shortage of educators: the 2024-2025 school year began with a deficit of 24,000 teachers, driven by emigration and professionals leaving for better-paid sectors. Many schools rely on retired teachers or first-year university students to keep classrooms open.
Portrait of Eulalia, an elderly resident of Trinidad, Cuba, July 2022.
Nearly 23% of Cuba's population is over 60, making it one of the most rapidly aging countries in Latin America. For many older Cubans, daily life unfolds within a healthcare system struggling to provide the medicines and services it once guaranteed.
Pedrito shapes wooden figures for tourists in an improvised workshop inside an abandoned factory in Havana, July 2023.
Like many Cubans, he works outside the formal economy, using self-taught skills and tools he and his friends repair themselves. Selling crafts to visitors is one of the few ways to access foreign currency on the island.
María Fátima celebrates her eleventh birthday with friends inside a family home in Cuba.
Birthdays continue to be marked, quietly and with what is available, even when the future feels uncertain.
A hairdresser works with a client in the living room of her home in Trinidad, Cuba, July 2022. The products she uses are sent by her son from the United States — without them, she could not work.
Home-based businesses like hers have become a primary survival strategy for many Cuban women, who represent only about a third of registered self-employed workers despite being nearly half the workforce.
Atenea rests in the small Havana apartment she shares with her family, July 2022. Her older sister had already left for the Dominican Republic. Atenea was waiting for the day her sister could bring her there.
In 2022 alone, more than 220,000 Cubans arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, part of one of the largest migration waves in the island's history.
Lázaro Cantero and his family spend the afternoon in the shared courtyard of their building in Old Havana, July 2022. The colonial home, like many in the historic center, has been subdivided over decades into multiple dwellings, with kitchens and bathrooms shared among several families.
When asked what sustains them, Lázaro answered with a single word: "Art."
A young girl plays outside her home while her grandfather watches from the doorway in Trinidad, Cuba, July 2022. It is a common scene in Cuba, where grandparents often serve as primary caregivers while parents work.
Many children in the country face nutritional deficiencies, including iron, iodine, and vitamin A, as a direct consequence of prolonged food shortages and rationing.
Historic buildings in central Havana show visible structural deterioration, November 2024, days before Hurricane Rafael made landfall in western Cuba.
More than a third of the country's housing stock is classified in fair or poor condition. Residents continue to inhabit these spaces, adapting to cracked facades and the constant threat of collapse.
Portrait of a young woman outside a nail salon in Old Havana.
Small beauty businesses like this one have multiplied as Cuban women navigate the informal economy to supplement or replace official wages. Despite making up nearly half the workforce, women represent only about a third of registered self-employed workers, often operating without formal recognition or social protection.
A bedroom inside a Havana apartment, July 2023.
Mismatched furniture, aging fixtures, and makeshift repairs mark many Cuban homes, shaped by decades of housing shortage and the scarcity of materials needed to maintain them.
A man sits at the entrance of his home during a blackout in Havana, November 2024, lit only by the screen of his phone.
Power cuts have become a defining feature of daily life across the island, with some areas going without electricity for days at a time. The grid is aging, maintenance has been deferred for years, and key generating plants have collapsed under the strain.
A couple dances at a neighborhood social club in Matanzas, Cuba, November 2024.
These modest halls have become intergenerational meeting points — spaces where people come not only to dance but to stay connected to each other and to a version of life that the current crisis has not yet reached.
A woman steps out of a collective taxi carrying a newborn in central Havana.
On the street, life moves at its own pace.
Young men gather at the outdoor gym beside Parque Cristo in Old Havana, November 2024.
When approached, almost all said the same thing: they wanted to leave. The one in the back, hand on his head, said he was already set to go to Spain.
A group of men play dominoes on a Monday evening in Old Havana.
Most are out of work. Several said the same thing: there is nothing to do and nowhere to go, and the game is a way to make the hours pass.
The bakers at El Criollo asked to be photographed and then asked if they could be helped to leave Cuba.
They said they had seen images of Mexico and would like to live there.
Children play marbles in a street in Trinidad, Cuba, as an elderly woman walks by, July 2022.
Cuba is simultaneously one of the most rapidly aging countries in Latin America and one where a growing number of children face food insecurity and nutritional deficiencies. Both generations live with the same scarcity, in different forms.
An elderly man with a disability looks out from his apartment in Trinidad, Cuba.
More than 360,000 people with disabilities live in Cuba, all affected by the same economic pressures bearing down on the rest of the population. Cuban law requires public buildings, health services, and transportation to accommodate people with disabilities, but enforcement has been largely ineffective, leaving the needed facilities rarely available.
A woman sings during a Friday gathering at Peña Semilla Nueva in central Havana, November 2024. The weekly event brings neighbors together through music, poetry, and personal stories.
In a country where public expression is constrained, spaces like this function as much as community as they do as culture.
A stormy night in Playa Larga during a blackout, Cuba.
The island's energy crisis has produced outages lasting hours or days across the country, the result of an aging grid, years of deferred maintenance, and the collapse of key generating plants. The storm and the darkness arrived together.