El cubano se ofrece (The Cuban Offers Himself)

In the late 1960s, Iván Cañas took photos for the series El cubano se ofrece (The Cuban Offers Himself), an essay on the town Caibarién, where Cañas would travel on numerous occasions to capture the people standing to make “a photographic album of the life of a provincial town”. With the help of his mentor, photographer and designer Raúl Martínez, Cañas organised, in 1970, the dummy of a photobook, to be complemented with a text written by Reynaldo González. Cañas claimed, however, that the Cuban authorities believed the project did not sufficiently emphasise the revolutionary accomplishments and the book was finally published in 1986, with more optimistic images added to the ensemble, but without relinquishing its critical and realist gaze.