Maria Rosenblatt | Havana

Facades of Havana
By Maria Rosenblatt

“This series was captured in 2017 during my first visit to Cuba. I spent several days in Havana, which left me with many very contradictory impressions.
For me, Havana’s facades represent the tone of the city. With a very exciting and rich architectural past nowadays, many buildings are ramshackle with many signs of a very humble level of life. These contrasts can be related to many other things that I experienced in Havana: the huge gap between tourist and local neighborhoods, restaurants and bars, different currency and prices for foreigners and Cubans, shiny autos from 50ths that pass by Malecon next to modern cars.
Those facades mesmerized me as unique pieces of history that are happening right here, right now. And inspired by that, I created this series”. – Maria Rosenblatt

“In architecture, the facade of a building is often the most important aspect from a design standpoint, as it sets the tone for the rest of the building.” (Wikipedia)

Maria Rosenblatt

Maria Rosenblatt is an artist, photographer, musician, and founder of Beam Collective.

Born in Russia, Israeli-based, Maria is an artist who combines two art fields in her practice: fine art photography and music. Her exposure to the world of art began in early childhood when she started to play the violin. After graduation from two high schools of music, she decided to develop her artistic spirit more by acquiring new skills in visual arts studying photography.
Nowadays, Maria expresses her passion for art through photography and music. She plays violin in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and makes fine art photographs. There are still life photographs in her fine art field of interest, work with the human body, and architectural subjects.
Her mission is to bring something new to people’s emotional and physical life, to touch their souls and mind, to make them more confident about themselves and aware of the world around them, and by all this, to make our world better.

Lines & Shapes

What signifies the atmosphere of a place the most?
For someone, it would be a particular smell; for others – an exceptional sound, unique taste, certain sense. For me, it is definitely an architectural oeuvre of the place viewed from different points of view. And despite every place and piece of architecture is unique, I like to look for similarities between different kinds of structures in various world areas.
In this series, there are structures from 8 places in 7 countries, built in different epochs, with diverse functions. But their fascinating graphic lines and shapes make the invisible bridge between all these other places for my eye.

See the full article in Lens Magazine Issue #88