Campesinos: The Heart and Soul of Cuba

The Hoover Public Library is honored to host photographers Chip Cooper and Julio Ángel Larramendi Joa on Tuesday, October 13 at 6:30 pm. They will be opening a month-long art exhibit of their collaborative project chronicling the lives of campesinos, or peasant farmers, in Cuba. The photographs were taken over the course of a two-year trip that included visits to every province of Cuba and were originally exhibited in Havana in March 2015. The exhibit then travelled, upon invitation, to the Vatican in June as part of a celebration of diplomatic relations with Cuba. This is the first time that all of the photos of Cooper and Larramendi’s extraordinary journey will be on display. The University of Alabama Press will publish a book in 2016 featuring the photographs, titled Campesinos, The Heart and Soul of Cuba. Cuban refreshments will be provided by Coffee-ol-ogy. This free event will be held in the Friends Gallery on the Library Theatre level. For more information, contact the Arts Department 205-444-7888. Chip Cooper, former Director of Photography for the University of Alabama for 33 years, is now artist in residence in the Honors College, as well as a faculty member in Arts & Sciences. His work has been featured in a number of publications including Antiques & Fine Arts Magazine, Newsweek, The Village Voice, USA Today, Alabama Heritage, Sophisticated Traveler – The New York Times, Veranda and South x Southeast Photo Magazine. His books include Hunting the Southern Tradition, Alabama Memories, Silent in the Land, Common Threads (with stories by Kathryn Tucker Windham), Crimson: The University of Alabama, Charlie Lucas: The Tin Man and Habana Vieja, Old Havana (with Cuban photographer Nestor Marti). He has won many awards and has shown his work nationally and internationally. His work is in many museums, private and corporate collections. Cooper began his work in Cuba through UA’s Alabama-Cuba Initiative. In March 2014, he received an Artist in Residence from the Fototeca de Cuba for the City of Havana. Julio Ángel Larramendi Joa is a native Cuban and studied chemistry under the USSR during the Soviet Union’s reign in Cuba from 1972 to 1991. In 1975, he began to work in specialized laboratory and scientific photography. Government scientist-gone-freelance, Larramendi began photographing full time in 1997. He has given lectures, taught basic and postgraduate courses and photography workshops, both in Cuba and abroad, has won many awards and contributed to many publications. He was placed among the top 100 Cuban photographers of the twentieth century by CUBA-FOTO Magazine.