Señora Faxas Residence, No. 1, Miramar, Havana, Cuba

Robert Polidori

1997

Chromogenic print (Fuji Crystal Archive)

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Robert Polidori's photograph of the grand salon of the twelve room turn-of-the- century Faxas Residence serves as a metaphor for the decay and decline of life in Havana. The once elegant room and its formerly lavish furnishings project a sadness and a hopelessness but at the same time a quiet dignity. The Havana photographs are from a 1997 series commissioned by the New Yorker magazine, for which Mr. Polidori received the prestigious Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for magazine photography in 1999. They reflect the artist's abiding interest in an architecture which is evolving and decomposing but still evinces memories of a bygone era. Mr.