In 'Vanishing Cuba,' LI photo focuses on island nation

Michael Chinnici loves to tell stories with his camera, and for him, no place has more tales that need to be told than Cuba.

Now in the Cold Spring Harbor photographer’s first book, "Vanishing Cuba: Curated Photo Storytelling Collection" (Red Octopus Publishing, $95), Chinnici charts the changes he has witnessed in Cuba during his 24 trips there. Chinnici spoke from his home about how his hobby became his profession, storytelling through image and his favorite place in the world to photograph.

Why is the book called "Vanishing Cuba"?

Cuba is unique because it was sidelined between the Cuban government and the U.S. embargo for the past 60 years — it feels like a time capsule in many ways. This is not to say that Cuba is going away, but with modernization and technology, a version of Cuba is disappearing. It has really emerged in the past decade. Cuba will rapidly change soon. When that happens, so will the culture. I wanted to document that Cuba before it disappears.

How did this project come about?

If it wasn’t for COVID, this book would not have happened. I run trips for other photographers to more than 50 countries in the world. I’ve done 24 trips to Cuba and I kept saying I would put this book together when I had a few free months, but of course that never came to be. Then, suddenly, COVID hit and we could not travel. I thought, I should look at these 100,000 photos.

How did you decide which of the 100,000 photos to keep for the book?

The first cut was down to 3,000. Then the final 300. Every image had to tell a story. The book is laid out like a gallery; each page has one image for the most part, so the reader is not overwhelmed. Most artists would only give a title, not a description of the work. But what I am most proud of is the description and story I wrote that is included with every photograph.

We really get to know the people and places you photograph through these stories, which appear in both English and Spanish. What was that process like?

The writing, the fact-checking, and the translating were all very time-intensive. I wrote the descriptions in English and then put them through Google translate before shipping them off to Cuba for our translator to review. We’ve worked together with this translator on many of our trips. She took the descriptions and added in her own fact checking while translating. I wanted to get everything right.

You live on an island and your first book is about an island. How did Long Island inform your relationship with Cuba?

The book is about pre-emptive vanishing. When I was a kid, my father used to fly radio-controlled airplanes in Huntington. There was nothing in Huntington, it was just a cornfield. Montauk used to be the end of the world, just some motor homes in Hither Hills and a couple places to eat in town. Now Montauk is the Riviera of Long Island. Long Island is a case study in pre-emptive vanishing.

How did you get into photography?

I was born in Brooklyn in 1958. We moved to Valley Stream, and my father shot with a Nikon as a hobby. When I was young, we had a dark room in the basement. We did a lot of boating and fishing growing up on Long Island and I loved Montauk for pictures. My mother was an artist and forbid me to become one. She said, "Please don’t be an artist, you’re going to starve to death!” … So photography was just a hobby. I went into advertising and marketing and had my own agency for 25 years. Then I opened Icon Digital, the first digital photo studio in New York, in 1995 and I started to take photography more seriously.

How has your art evolved during that time?  

The documentary aspect came into play. When I was young, I used to wait for the people to get out of the photo. I’d say, "I want the storefront!" And now I want the people in the picture with the storefront. Sometimes you know the story before you take the picture, and sometimes you take the picture and afterwards you get to know the person and the story unfolds. The beautiful thing about the photos on this book is that I returned and got to know so many of the people I was photographing. That’s what I hope you see and feel in the book; that only happens because I had the luxury of returning.

You’ve visited nearly everywhere on the planet. Where is your favorite place to photograph?

I travel 23 to 25 weeks of the year doing photography trips, but I’d never call any other place home. My favorite place to photograph is still Montauk. There is a very young crowd now and it has changed very much, but there is a still a raw aspect to it. I love photographing the beaches and rocks and lighthouse. It is still a fishing base and Montauk Point is still Montauk Point.