“The Chemical”: The Faces of an Invisible Havana

Photo Feature by Idania Cardenas

HAVANA TIMES – On the streets of Havana, there is a reality that rarely becomes the focus of attention. Men and women of different ages spend hours in doorways, on steps, and along sidewalks, apparently under the effects of a substance that many simply call “the chemical.”

The photographs in this series grew out of these encounters. They do not seek to single anyone out or pass judgment. Nor do they attempt, from a distance, to explain the reasons that brought each person to that moment. The camera simply records what it finds: exhausted bodies, vacant stares, people asleep, faces that seem disconnected from a city that continues moving around them.

“The chemical” has become a term used to describe a phenomenon that, behind its street name, is far more complex. Substance use, social vulnerability, poverty, neglect, illness, loneliness, and lack of opportunities may all be part of the stories that remain hidden behind each of these faces.

These photographs are not intended to show Havana’s drug users. They are intended to show people. People who, for different reasons, find themselves at one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. Perhaps the question these images leave us with is not what they consumed, but what happened to them that brought them here.

The Havana that appears in these photographs is not the Havana of postcards. It is an everyday Havana. Harsh and silent, where some lives unfold on the margins while the city carries on. And photographing it also means accepting that behind what is uncomfortable to look at are human beings whose stories we still do not know.

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