Cuba: Mi Amor

In his latest collection of photographs, Zimbardo (India Holy Song) portrays Cuba as a polychrome extravaganza of impossibly blue skies, gauzy red nightclub curtains, gleaming yellow automobiles and green fields of grass. He details the sensual decay of crumbling concrete and peeling paint, the dynamism of carnival dancers, the explosion of color on poinciana trees. But the raked angles of Zimbardo's photos overwhelm the images; repeated diagonal shots of streetscapes, passers-by, hotel signs, and parked cars suggest forced motion over any natural momentum. In the book's foreword, Cristina Garcia (Dreaming in Cuban) makes the dubious argument that this perspective serves as cultural commentary on a country in which""one necessarily has to bend and twist the over-abundance of regulations and the under-abundance of resources into something sustainable."" It is when Zimbardo veers away from over-saturated color and beaming portraits that he captures something beyond the picturesque: A young boy playing street ball against a backdrop of barred windows; the hunched back of a cyclist on a drizzly day. And it is in the dark--in cowboys' shadows against a mural of Che Guevara and Jose Marti--that the complexity of Cuba comes forward. 128 full-color photographs.