Cuba Forever

When St. Louis-based photographer Michael Eastman went to Cuba for the first time, in 1999, he saw a beautiful building. He was studying it, thinking about how he might like to capture it on film, when he noticed a giant hole in its majestic green roof. Intrigued, he paid the building’s owner — Isabella — to let him inside to take some shots.

In 2000, Eastman returned to the building. The hole was still there, but Isabella had died. Her niece let him inside for a second viewing, and Eastman shot “Two Chairs, Isabella’s,” an astounding photograph of two chairs facing one another in a high-ceilinged room with intricate molding in the doorways. Dingy paint peels off the walls, and a chandelier looks as though it’s about to fall from the ceiling. Behind the chairs, laundry hangs on a line.

Although nothing is happening, tension seeps in through the cracks: The facing chairs imply conversation, and the ordinary clothesline undercuts the lighting fixture’s regalness. The room is empty, but there’s a human presence. “I look for that,” Eastman says. “I don’t photograph architecture because I think architecture is wonderful. My photographs always look like someone is either about to enter the space or has just left.”

Eastman manages to elicit empathy for the building’s unseen inhabitants. “You can see this attempt to improve,” he says, noting that the chandelier had been purchased since his previous visit, “and yet the whole infrastructure is decaying in the background.”

For Eastman, “Two Chairs, Isabella’s” captures the poignancy of Cuba’s condition. In studying the history of photography, he’s looked at pictures taken in the ’30s and ’40s. “You can’t help but think, I wish I could have been there. I wish I had access to scenes like that,” Eastman says. “Cuba afforded me that opportunity, because it hasn’t changed since then. It’s stuck in time.”

Eastman had long admired Walker Evans, who accompanied American journalist Carleton Beals on a trip to Cuba in 1933, before he ever dreamed of following in Evans’ footsteps. Upon arrival in Cuba, he was shocked to find how closely the country resembled the Cuba he had seen in Evans’ work. “Maybe the clothes have changed a little,” he allows.

“Two Chairs, Isabella’s” suggests that change doesn’t visit Cuba in the way that it does our glistening new suburbs. Change hovers in the ceiling that threatens to fall, and it lies in the natural decay that is only accelerated by the elements that come in through the hole in the roof. It’s the uninvited guest, unintimidated by fragile walls.

When “Two Chairs, Isabella’s” comes to the Sherry Leedy gallery this week, it will be big. Framed by a carpenter, the print Eastman has been trying to squeeze into his car for the drive from St. Louis is 8 feet tall. “This is the closest to capturing a place as I’ve ever been able to do, in part because of the enlargement,” he says. “The chairs are almost the right size.”