Roberto Salas: A Photographer on a Quest for the Different

The match between the color of the naked skin treated in sepia and the hues of dry tobacco leaves marks a different stage in Salitas’ artworks

Whenever a sensitive personality, who has the ability to watch closely and holds a esthetic criterion of his own, develops the necessary skills to express that much, we could then speak of an artistic creator. Roberto Salas –Salitas, as his friends call him- is a good case in point. The nickname has nothing to do his size. Salitas is a well-built man, the son of another celebrated Cuban photographer, Osvaldo Salas. He admits that his “love for photography runs in the blood, though marked by the chemicals used in film developing and the smell of the fixing.” The intense road he has traveled is stoned with such major highlights as a picture taken back in the 1950s and published by Life magazine, featuring a flag of the 26 of July Movement on the Statue of Liberty’s forehead; the Vietnam War that depicted a valid image in the long run, just like an essay; Che Guevara, in a piece of work he did with his father back in the 1970s; and the backlight image of Che himself shrouded in the billowing smoke of a cigar. And the year 1994 showed his dazzling sepia-treated nude figures. It was during a moment of relaxation, away from politics and any social environment, when he reached out for a classic painting genre. “It’s not nudity for the sake of it. It was the match between the color of the naked skin treated in sepia and the hues of dry tobacco leaves what actually inspired me,” he says. “The point is I’m always doing different things. Now I’ve begun a photographic essay of approximately 70 pictures entitled This is the Way Cubans Are.” They’re studio pictures and painting classics. “In black and white because color is… too pretty.”