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Larramendi (izq.) y Chip Cooper.

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In 2003, the American professor and photographer George Price Chip Cooper made his first trip to Havana. From then until now, he has lost count of the times he has visited the island. Here you will always find a reason to return and a reason to continue investigating the Cuban soul, he says.
«I came and brought my books, I exchanged ideas, but it was Dr. Eusebio Leal, the Historian of Havana, who encouraged me and motivated», says George Price Chip Cooper about his first contacts with Cuba. By that time, he had the intention of performing a series of portraits of personalities.
Cooper has returned: at the Hostel Conde de Villanueva in Old Havana, exhibits a sui generis exhibition along with photographer Julio Larramendi. Larramendi encouraged Chip to visit Santiago de Cuba at the time the city’s well-known carnivals were taking place.
«It was not competition but collaboration» explains Larramendi who said they spent more than seven hours capturing the beauty that encloses Santiago’s carnivals.
The result of this experience was the exhibition called «Carnival», an explosion of light and color. Perhaps the most interesting feature is the fusion of languages ​​that they both achieved. That is why the audience has trouble identifying where Cooper’s work begins and Larramendi’s finishes.
But the collaboration has not stopped, a new book entitled Peasants: heart and soul of Cuba is already completed and will begin to circulate in the United States, and then in Havana in the fall of 2016. Thanks to the Editorial Alabama Press, this joint work will come out displaying a final selection of 240 photographs.