Felix Arencibia: Photography is not a Job; it is a Way of Life (Versión en español)

By Amauris Betancourt.

amauris@radioangulo.icrt.cu

This interview was originally published on knowing Felix Arencibia’s death in July 15, 2007 at http://www.lentecubano.blospot.com/, a blog to promote today’s Cuban photojournalism administered by a friend photographer, Rene Pérez Massola, who is at the head of a specialized photojournalist group from the Association of Cuban Journalist (UPEC in Spanish).

Felix Arencibia was an outstanding Cuban photojournalist and photography lecturer from the Jose Marti International Cuban Journalism Institute.

Published interview:
Felix Arencibia visited Holguin about two years ago to share his knowledge and photographic secrets of an almost forty-year career as a professional photoreporter who ended up as a photography teacher to almost all currently active photojournalist in Cuba. That is why many photographers from the Island and Latin America, me included, are thankful and truly heartfelt indebted to him.

A friendship came into being out of this visit, one of the many starting in the early 1960’s. It seems to me as if I had known him all my lifetime. He had a truly gift to make friends and win them over completely.

While on a visit to Holguin to teach a photography course to local photojournalist he agreed to an interview that went unpublished for two years. I aim, by giving it out, at paying due homage to Felix Arencibia who died in Havana at the age of 68.

How does Felix Arencibia begin photographing?

I believe one chooses a career out of love, even though sometimes you do other jobs for the sake of a change. I have been in touch with the photo world since I was a child. My mother loved to have me photographed then, as it certainly happened to other photographers. Thanks to José Marti’s mother, comparisons apart, who always worried about having Marti, as a child, photographed, we have an amazing iconography of Marti. Not coming to such an extreme my mother also liked to do the same thing and he kept all those pictures. Photography seems to come out of that family love. Not to forget I come from a peasant family. It was for peasants a means to keep the childhood innocence; those beautiful years when boys grow up that could be seen years later. So I really ran into photography thus, out of love when I was very young. I have been making pictures almost 40 years out of the 66 I am now and I am not tired of it at all.
Somebody asked me once if I was going to retire. I could get retired when I was 60 and I did not. Photography is not a job it is a way of life. One feels happy making photos if you really love it.

You stated you have been making pictures for almost forty years; do you still have your first frozen photogram?

Yes, I do; and I have been aware of improvement with time. Picture making has to do with visual appreciation, with practice and technique, a technique you have to master to perfection but somehow forget when shooting. You have to use it as a conditioned reflex. Experience and time added it to your sub-consciousness. The difference between an amateur and a professional is, in my opinion, that the former makes from time to time a good photo, but the latter is always forced to do something good and when he presses the shutter speed button, he knows right away what it is going to come out. You have developed your work in many fields and topics of photography during your long and highlighted professional work as a photoreporter and teacher.

Do you keep a preference for a particular field?

I care very much for portraits. I love making portraits of peasants, of ordinary people. I suggest photographing mornings and afternoons. The angle of the sun is very good and the subject can be moved around the sun, a source of fixed light with a good quality that adds a lightweight hot coloration. The noon light does not behave thus. Zenithal light is chaotic; its quality is bad and has a bluish color. Besides, the shades put in an unpleasant bagged-eyed effect. Light can be improved under other conditions but mornings and afternoons are the best hours. Some photographers get up even very early or they go to bed late to make good use of sunlight.

Photography and photographers intend to moralize, to bear witness, to hint, to teach, to philosophize. What does Felix Arencibia do?

Teaching; trying to get across to others this love for photography and that they devote themselves to teaching too. Roberto Rodriguez de Cal, who died some five years ago, was one of those good Cuban photography teachers. I believe that I have tried to follow his example and talked other young photographers, right here in Havana, into getting this love for teaching, because Marti said once that “climbing up hills make people brothers”, yet also stated that “photographers will people the world”. In fact, photographers’ number in Cuba is going up. Nowadays half the Cuban photographers are young. Old photographers have their own history but young people are making theirs their way, perhaps better.

Making pictures is a pleasure that enriches life "stated Jorgen Goomy. Do you share this statement?

Photography has saved many people. One of the best Cuban photographers owned a car business in the early years of the Revolution. When his business was nationalized, he went practically out of his mind. The psychiatrist asked him, what do you know to do? I make photos for a hobby. Devote yourself to photography. Taking pictures cured him. Photography helps you get rid of certain sorrows; it is a way of expression and a form of liberating everything, a series of impulses that one has inside.

You know a lot about Cuban photography. What do you think of its current situation?

There is such a boom in Cuban photography as never before. A great quantity of young women is making photos. Before and after the Triumph of the Revolution there were not many. They have a good quality. There is also a difference: older photographers, even the ones that have died, were self-taught and had a low cultural level; today they have a university level and that academic formation helps them learn the know-how faster, and can understand better the concepts of physics, of chemistry, of composition, that have to do with photography; Therefore, it is easier for a young man today to learn than to the one 60 years ago.

Digital photography is in fashion nowadays. Does it harms or favors? Does it block or open new creative roads? Does it replace the analogical?

It will, in the long run. It will happen as it did with long-play records replaced by cassettes and these eventually by CD. Analogical photography will stay there, but for professionals generally and for specific works. Today, a color film is worth three dollars; one in black and white is 6. That is, it is used by a few number of photographers. Development is inevitable. There are many factories that have reduced 75 percent of the production of analogical photography film elements. A few have kept it to send it to third-world countries.

What about you? Have you particularly yielded to digital photography?

I still use both because the former provides the basics, which is common to both. Digital photography is practically heir to all of the knowledge of the analogical world.

Does the new digital technology make anyone owning a digital camera into a photographer?

No, they take pictures; they do not make pictures. Photographer's concept is deeper. The photographer makes or creates photos. A professional photographer's image is creative, artistic, because the photographer puts in soul, feelings, philosophy, his way of looking at life, his mood inclusive.

What do you advise to beginning photographers?

Studying, studying and studying, besides sharing the knowledge with others without fear. The more they learn, the more we know.