Ramiro Fernández was born in Havana to a family involved in the pharmaceutical industry. He left Cuba in 1960, settling first in Palm Beach County and then in New York, where he was a photography editor at Time Inc. for 25 years. He was involved in the launches of Entertainment Weekly and People en Español magazines and worked at Sports Illustrated and People. He is the author of Cuba Then: Revised and Expanded (The Monacelli Press). A witness to the Cuban Revolution in his youth, Fernández’s consuming passion has been to build a photography collection to represent the Cuba he remembers. With an autobiographical introduction from the author, who was born in Havana, and peppered with selections from Richard Blanco’s alluring poetry, these pages take readers inside circuses, concerts, filmsets, and street parades. From unlikely images of historical newsmakers (Fidel Castro drinking a Coca-Cola on a public bus) to a roster of jet-setting celebrities such as Celia Cruz, and Winston Churchill, Cuba Then is a welcome new edition of this seductive and lush photographic survey of the small island that continues to fascinate the world.
