Eduardo Hernández Santos made these photographs of homosexuals, transgenders, and crossdressers in the summer of 2005 at Havana, Cuba’s seafront wall. Taken together, the pictures in this book tell a remarkable story of human endurance and triumph. Hernández Santos presents his subjects not as passive players but as people who struggle (though more quietly than not) against discrimination even though such struggle is very risky.

Working only at night, Hernández Santos developed his film with expired chemistry; he printed his images on outdated photo paper, then developed them with exhausted chemistry. His darkroom was his darkroom. He did this not out of choice but out of necessity.

El Muro: The Wall

Once Hernández Santos made his prints, he used transfer lettering to literally press onto his images the words of the late, gay, Cuban poet and playwright, Virgilio Pinera.

Late one night at 4:00am, on his way home from El Muro (The Wall), Hernández Santos was beaten and robbed of his camera. His project ended then and there.

Born in 1966, Eduardo Hernández Santos graduated in printmaking from Academia Nacional de Artes Plasticas “San Alejandro” in 1985. He has made numerous series of photographic and mixed media collages, most notably Strong 2005 and Corpus-Frágile 2002 that address issues of gay identity. His work has been exhibited in the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, Portugal, Spain and Cuba. He lives, works and teaches in Havana, Cuba.

El muro is a collection of ten offset triptych photographs and two bilingual essays by the artist and the young and insightful Cuban ethnographer Abel Sierra. The photographs and text are printed on Shine, luminous mica coated, acid free paper. Three sheets of translucent magenta paper separate the photographs and essays. El Muro is 9″ x 13.5″ opening to 20″. The structure of the book is semi-concealed wire-o binding serving the original triptych design. Edition of 1200. Purchase El muro

Deluxe edition of 50 includes a signed copy of El muro and two pigmented-ink portraits signed on verso in a clamshell box. Purchase El muro deluxe edition

Collections

MoMA, Stanford, Smith College, Yale, Princeton, Washington University, University of Minnesota, George Eastman House, University of Miami Library, Cuban Heritage Collection University of Miami, Hampton University, Tulane, Phoenix Art Museum, Columbia College, British Library, Free Library of Philadelphia, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Wake Forest, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, University of the West of England – Bristol, Wellesley College, Williams College y, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Germany,  The Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Oberlin College, International Center for Photography, New York, The Sex Museum, New York, The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Center, New York, University of Texas at El Paso, University of Denver

Praise

“. . . Eduardo Hernandez Santos’s camera has captured in his luscious tome, EL muro: The Wall,  Gs, Ls, Bs and a stunning array of Ts face the lens with fierce defiance. The shimmering, black and white photographs are juxtaposed with wild lines from the late, gay Cuban poet and playwright Virgilio Piñera. This book is an act of faith and courage, a heavy topic artistically and delicately presented. I loved looking into those dark, defiant eyes.

—Eduardo Santiago is a PEN U.S.A. Emerging Voices Fellow. His first novel Tomorrow They Will Kiss was an Edmund White Debut Fiction Award nominee, a Latino Book Award finalist, and a 2006 Book Sense pick.

“Through a paradox of history as one wall is brought down another is raised. And even as they fall, the walls leave indelible traces within us. It is such invisible walls that Eduardo Hernández Santos’ powerful work brings into visibility. His act of courage and his artistic accomplishment should be hailed by the community of human beings throughout the world.”

— Anca Cristofovici, Professor of American Literature and Photography at the University of Caen, France and author of Touching Surfaces: Photographic Aesthetics, Temporality, Aging, Rodopi Press 2009

“A very dramatic and powerful visual and literary statement of a hidden Cuban subculture. The juxtaposition of the walls and the human images in the nighttime gives one a feeling of entering a forbidden walled city. Disturbing, thought-provoking and very well done.”
— Abigail Rorer, Lone Oak Press

“El muro/The Wall, what a really lovely production, particularly in its design – paper, interleaving, colors, binding, etc. just a beautiful object, to be treasured. Its ‘glitter,’ particularly that black paper, & the book’s delicacy as form, seems perfect for Hernández’s subject; something both profoundly staged & artificial, & simultaneously rough & human.”
— Robert Seydel, Editor of Several Gravities by Keith Waldrop, published by Siglio Press and Associate Professor of Visual Art at Hampshire College, Amherst, MA

“The beautiful and the monstrous, the natural and the artificial are integrated into an intelligent metaphoric strategy whose main goal is to make visible the complex life of the homosexual subject in Cuba. Eduardo Hernández Santos’ central message, albeit born in Cuba, clearly defines the archaic conceptions prevalent in any patriarchal society.”
— Carlos Tejo, Changes in Cuban Photography at the end of the 20th century: Body Visions in Cuban Art, 2006, Universidad Politécnica, Valencia, Spain