The Book

SENSUAL HAVANA art-nude coffee-table book is a visual celebration of the beauty and sensuality of Cuba's capital city and its women by award-winning author, photographer, & Cuba expert Christopher P. Baker

In 2015 Annie Leibovitz famously photographed Rhianna nude in Havana for Vanity Fair, following a long tradition of photographers--from Imogen Cunningham, Helmut Newton, and Bettina Rheims--who have celebrated the naked human form since the first cameras were made. Cuban arts professor Rafael Acosta de Arriba’s beautiful coffee-table book, La Seducción de la Mirada: Fotografía del Cuerpo en Cuba (1840-2013), celebrates more than a century of nude photography by Cuban photographers, male and female alike. Cuba today has an avant-garde (and overtly erotic) art scene, as its own photographers have pushed the boundaries, experimenting more confidently with nude photography. The Instituto Superior de Arte (Cuba's foremost arts school) even offers nude photography courses.

Now, award-winning travel writer and photographer Christopher P. Baker—acclaimed by National Geographic as “One of the world’s foremost authorities on Cuba travel and culture”—uses his passion for Cuba to evoke the sensuality of Havana and its cubanas.

A tribute to the female form, Christopher’ respectful and elegant treatment of the subject pays homage to all that is positive about the Cuban Revolution's advancement of women’s rights and self-determination, while also honoring their own unashamedly and affirmatively self-confident pride in expressing their sensuality. As professional pianist Ingrid de la Caridad Zamora wrote after posing nude beside a grand piano: "Thank you, Chris. It was a very beautiful experience!" Ingrid's first-ever formal shoot as models showed that nude photography can be artistic without being erotic, and erotic without being pornographic.

Nonetheless, Sensual Havana was never conceived as a work of erotica. As Christopher writes in the Preface: "I viewed it from the ancient Greek perspective, placing the human body on a pedestal, to be appreciated with reverence as a work of art and majestic beauty… and, yes, for its sensuality. So, this book is for anyone who appreciates the human body as art. And, critically, as a travel photographer, I wanted to portray the female models in Havana’s sensual urban context—its uniquely evocative caught-in-a-time-warp settings that Hollywood would be hard-pressed to equal."

Combining glamour, boudoir, and figurative fine-art nudes, the book is intended, above all, to be an unapologetic source of aesthetic joy—a panegyric to female beauty—and an expression of esteem for the free-spirited Cuban females' self-confident pride in expressing their sensuality without shame. Ranging in age from 18 to 51, the women in these pages proudly wear their own skins (if little else); they accept and respect themselves as sensuous beings. Hopefully, my images will convey that feeling to others.