2026 Havana, Cuba

Words for this moment

Every photograph begins before the shutter is released. In this project, it begins when a person pauses for a few minutes to find the words that define this moment in their life.

When a crisis becomes the dominant narrative of a country, people risk being reduced to categories, statistics, or political positions. Words for This Moment emerges from a desire to turn our attention toward what these generalizations leave out: the singular experience of each individual.

Created in Havana in July 2026, the project brings together portraits of around 50 people who, before being photographed, took a moment to talk, reflect, and write down the words they wanted to use to name the moment they were going through. In collaboration with journalist Liz Oliva Fernández, we approached these individuals to talk about their lives and circumstances. They were not responding to a single question, nor were we seeking to reproduce a slogan. The only condition was that they write something honest about their lives and what they were experiencing.

Each portrait preserves this moment of self-representation: the moment when a person decides how they want to name their own experience. Portrait and word complement one another, constructing a more complex representation of each individual, in which the image enters into dialogue with the way each person chooses to tell their own story.

Together, these voices bring together experiences shaped by fear, loss, affection, desire, uncertainty, hope, and contradiction. They do not construct a shared story, nor do they seek to resolve the present through a common explanation. Their experiences coexist without becoming a single narrative.

The project does not seek to explain Cuba or propose a single reading of this moment. In the face of narratives that tend to homogenize the experiences of those living through a crisis, Words for This Moment redirects attention toward the human scale: the irreducible experience of each individual and their own way of naming it.