Foreword

I first met Chris in San Francisco in 1982 when he signed up for a UC Berkeley class I was teaching on travel photography. We were both recent transplants from Northern England and soon became firm friends, in spite of him being from Yorkshire, a rival, and I have to say, greatly inferior county to my own Derbyshire. He was an aspiring travel writer and we soon teamed up to produce a series of articles on subjects as wide ranging as walruses, the silk industry, and Agra, Varanasi, and 18th-century astronomical observatories in India.

We maintained our friendship through the years while going our separate ways geographically and becoming firmly established at the top of our chosen fields.  

Over the past few years, I have enjoyed traveling with Chris once again, but this time jointly leading photography tours to Cuba. Several visits, with Chris’s remarkable insights as a Cuba expert, have made me a true Cuba aficionado… but regrettably I have never experienced the beauty of the island portrayed in this book! 

Chris’s skill as a photographer has resulted in a body of work—and what a body!—that could so easily have been tawdry titillation but instead captures the sensuality of Cuban women with good taste and sensitivity. He shows women proud of their bodies without the bizarre hang ups about nudity that prevail in North America. Beyond the obvious attraction of the women, his use of light provides a masterclass in composition and location photography.

For a writer of Chris’s ability to demonstrate equal talent as a photographer is a remarkable accomplishment. The result is a magnificent tribute to the women of Cuba.

ROBERT HOLMES – California, 2024

Widely recognized as one of the world's foremost international travel and adventure photojournalists, Robert Holmes launched his distinguished career covering the 1975 British Everest Expedition for London’s Daily Mail and Paris Match. He has since traveled the world to illustrate dozens of books, plus feature articles for most of the world’s leading magazines, including Departures, Islands, Life, National Geographic, Saveur, Time, Travel + Leisure, and Wine Spectator. Named 'Travel Photographer of the Year' an unprecedented five times by the Society of American Travel Writers, his life-story is recorded in his coffee-table book PASSAGES: Fifty Years of Stories, Journeys & Images.