Hermosa Cuba is Havana, built from Charlotte's own photographs of the city, taken over several days. Using her signature multi layer photographic technique, Charlotte composites many of her own frames into one image, the way a film editor assembles a scene from many takes. The result is a patchwork, blocks of color set against each other, the composition holding in squares rather than running in one direction. Balconies, windows and doorways all frame something, and the layering sets them inside each other, frames within frames the whole way across. The layering did the color. Charlotte's photographs are pastel yellow, cream and green in afternoon light. Layered, they turn blue and washed out, the sky and the water getting into everything. Balconies and iron railings run across the top. Laundry hangs among them, white and yellow, from a street where the paint is coming off the walls. Buildings fill the middle. At the center is the Ministry of the Interior at Revolution Square, with Che Guevara's face in steel outline on its side and the words below it, Hasta la victoria siempre. Onward to victory, always. It stands several miles inland from the seafront at the bottom of the same artwork. Between the washed color and that face, the city ends up looking the age it is, somewhere back in the 1950s. Along the bottom is the Malecón, the seafront where Havana walks, with the skyline of the far shore behind it. The people are small: a woman crossing in a white shirt, two more standing together on the right, and along the bottom edge others walking, sitting, talking. Two vintage American cars sit low in the middle, small enough to miss. The lampposts stand at both edges of the frame, matching curls of iron, holding the whole width of the city between them. This work is part of The Breathe Series, Charlotte Fonne's landscapes and cityscapes, where reality merges with the echoes of memory. Each image in the composition is personally photographed by Charlotte, ensuring a genuine and unique piece. Signed, numbered, and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. Limited edition. Only 5 to 20 prints per size exist in the world.
