Havana is a city that straddles socialism and capitalism, decay and glamour, seditious colors, and melancholic interiors. The city races in many opposite directions, due to its arrested development, towards an uncertain future.
Havana Hours is an ongoing project, a visual reflection on time and space and the people Reichardt encounters in the iridescent city. His approach varies, from documentary to semi-documentary, to staged scenes, to stylized object views. Reichardt deliberately leaves open where the lines of the individual approaches blur. The camera shows but also conceals. In the fragment, in the simplification, in the silhouette, there is a multitude of open emotions and questions.
Reichardt’s camera is an eye that looks to the front and the back at the same time. To the front, the “shoots” a picture, while to the back he draws a silhouette of the photographer’s soul: looking back through his eyes, to his inner thoughts and reasonings. The images and movies that makeup Havana Hours are full of this depth and encourage studied consideration.