”¡No hay más na’!” (there’s nothing left) (2022-24)
James Clifford Kent has been chronicling life in Cuba for the past two decades. He returned recently for the first time since the global pandemic and encountered daily queues for basic goods, frequent power cuts and families forced out of collapsing homes into "albergues" (abandoned buildings refashioned as temporary homes). Others live in solares (tenement buildings), some at serious risk of collapse. Cuba’s harshest economic conditions since the dissolution of the Soviet Union have induced desperation and hopelessness and the exodus of many thousands of Cubans following the “rumbo al norte” (the route north to the United States). His ongoing long-form project brings into focus the daily challenges faced by an island on the brink, exploring themes such as power, identity and belonging.
Read more about the project here.
Maternity (2023)
This series documents a day-in-the-life of the Queen Mary Maternity Unit at West Middlesex University Hospital, part of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, where photographer James Clifford Kent’s daughter was born in 2020. It captures the experiences of expectant parents cared for by the team at the unit – including midwives, nurses and doctors – and moments that typically go unnoticed in portrayals of maternity care.
Check out work from the project here.
Pregnant in a Pandemic (2021-22)
This project explored the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on pregnancy, birth and parenthood. Having recently become a parent, James Clifford Kent witnessed firsthand how the pandemic impacted expectant and new parents. Everything from hospital restrictions on birth partners to national lockdowns shaped people's recent experiences of trying to conceive, pregnancy, birth and parenting. Portraits of new and expectant parents living in London accompanied testimonies of love, loss and survival in the face of adversity.
Beyond the Frame: Innovative approaches to curatorial and photographic practice in Havana, Cuba (2019-20)
This GCRF-funded project brought together Cuban experts, researchers and practitioners whose work involves curatorial and photographic practice (including collaborators from the Universidad de La Habana, the Universidad de las Artes (ISA), and the Fototeca de Cuba). With the aim of fostering sustainable societal development, the project explored physical, social, cultural and technological barriers relating to curatorial and photographic practice, thus stimulating challenge-led interdisciplinary research and helping to foster equitable partnerships between British and Cuban academics, stakeholders and policymakers. Participants at project workshops were encouraged to explore imaginative ways of producing, curating and talking about images. Focusing on the relationship between photography and audio-description, interactive workshops involved workshop participants collaborating with each other and reviewing the way we engage with photography in the gallery space.
“¡Yo soy Fidel!”: Post-Castro Cuba and the Cult of Personality (2018-19)
After the end of the Castro brothers’ near six decade-long leadership of Cuba in 2018, two years after Fidel Castro’s death, this AHRC-funded project explored the presence of iconic revolutionary images in contemporary Cuban society and themes such as the relationship between photographic language and identity. Drawing on fieldwork and practice-led research, the accompanying exhibition included images taken by both Cuban and renowned foreign photographers. This project was fully funded by the AHRC as part of the Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS) project based at the University of Cambridge.
Memories of a Lost Shark (2013-14)
Memories of a Lost Shark is a series of black-and-white photographs taken by James Clifford Kent and texts written by Cuban author Edmundo Desnoes. The correspondence between these invites the spectator to enter a conversation with both photographer and writer in an act of imaginative solidarity with the actors taking centre stage in each of these images – an engagement that allows still photographs to become as fluid as Cuban history. The series was exhibited at Oriel Colwyn and Instituto Cervantes in the United Kingdom and the Galeria Fayad Jamis in Havana, Cuba between 2013-14.
Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City: Real and Imagined Havana (2019)
Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City engages in alternative ways of reading foreign visual representations of Havana through analysis of advertising images, documentary films, and photographic texts. It explores key narratives relating to the projection of different Havana imaginaries and focuses on a range of themes including: pre-revolutionary Cuba; the dream of revolution; and the metaphor of the city “frozen-in-time.” The book also synthesizes contemporary debates regarding the notion of Havana as a real and imagined city space and fleshes out its theoretical insights with a series of stand-alone, important case studies linked to the representation of the Cuban capital in the Western imaginary. The interpretations in the book bring into focus a range of critical historical moments in Cuban history (including the Cuban Revolution and the “Special Period”) and consider the ways in which they have been projected in advertising, documentary film and photography outside the island.
“Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City possesses elements to be revered. Its keen historical passage through visual renderings of Havana, primarily carried out by outsiders, is diligently researched and well narrated … Kent’s technical savvy, matched by a respect for the photographers and filmmakers he analyzes, reflects his first-hand experience with photography and film … essential for scholars in Cuban studies with special interest in visual culture ...”
– Jacqueline Loss, New West Indian Guide, 2019
Selected articles
‘“¡No hay más na’!:” Visual narratives of a survival in crisis-hit Cuba’ [Journal article, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies; in preparation, 2024]
’Documenting compassion and teamwork in maternity care’ [Journal article, The Lancet, Vol. 402, Nov 25, 2023.]
‘Through a Cuban Lens: Storytelling and surrealism in the work of Raúl Cañibano’ [Journal article, Modernist Cultures, Special issue, 2023; submitted]
’Havana and the Music Film (1999-2005)’ [Journal article, Hispanic Research Journal, Volume: 18, Issue: 01, pp. 74-91, 2017]
’Walker Evans’s Psychogeographic Mapping of Havana, 1933’ [Journal article, History of Photography, Volume: 37, Issue: 03, pp. 326-340, 2013]
Raúl Cañibano: Human Landscapes [exhibition liaison]
The Photographers’ Gallery, London, England [January-April 2024] [link]
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2023
Royal Academy, London, England [June-August 2023] [link]
Raúl Cañibano: Chronicles of an Island [exhibition liaison]
The Photographers’ Gallery, London, England [September–December 2019] [link]
Read an interview with Raúl Cañibano here.
This is Cuba: Documentary Photography after Fidel [curator, group exhibition]
Royal Holloway, University of London, England (April 2018–June 2019)
Read more about the exhibition/project here
Memories of a Lost Shark [solo exhibition, with texts by Cuban writer Edmundo Desnoes]
Instituto Cervantes, Manchester, England (October 2013–February 2014) [funded by Arts Council England]
Galería Fayad Jamis: Centro de Arte y Literatura, Havana, Cuba (July 2013)
Oriel Colwyn, Colwyn Bay, North Wales (June 2013)
Find out more about the exhibition/project here
Read the Royal Photographic Society: Contemporary Photography Journal feature on the exhibition here