Perhaps the first thing to say about “Mobile and Havana” is that it is a beautiful book.
The first half of the volume contains photos by Alabamian Chip Cooper, well known to all for a lifetime of fine work, most of which featured Alabama subjects. But in the last few years Cooper published “Old Havana,” and “Campesinos: Inside the Soul of Cuba.” In the second half of the volume we have photos by Cuban photographer Julio Larramendi, who was a visiting artist-in-residence here in Tuscaloosa from 2015-2018. The numerous photos are all in color and take us on an extensive visual tour of Havana, Mobile and, in fact, a number of other places including St. Augustine, Florida.
Cooper’s photos are of Havana harbor, Morro Castle and the port defenses, sunset in Havana, American fortifications at Fort Morgan and of the Port of Mobile. Some shots capture flashes of nature—Spanish moss, the Gulf waters—but a majority are scenes in Havana, doorways, balconies, tile floors, wet cobbled streets. The beauty of the everyday is illuminated for us.
These photos accompany John Sledge’s text, a summary of the relationship, long and complex, between Mobile and Havana. The author of a series of detailed, heavily researched books, Sledge is the reigning expert on Mobile, having succeeded the previous master of the subject, Jay Higgenbotham. Today, especially since the Castro revolution of 1959, the conservatives of Mobile may not feel intimately connected to the socialists of Havana, but that is recent history, a blink in time.
Sledge reminds the reader of the strong connections during the age of exploration and the ways in which both cities shifted from one foreign flag to another: French, Spanish, American. In the nineteenth century the voyage between the two cities took under three days and trade was brisk. Mobile imported coffee, cigars, fruit. And Havana unloaded from Mobile, sawn lumber, wood for barrels and even firewood, the Cubans having cut down their forests. The Cubans, slaveholders themselves, were sympathetic to the Confederate cause. (Clearly, if it were not for current political difficulties, extensive trade would spring up again at once.) Boys from Havana attended Spring Hill College and returned to teach Cubans baseball which, obviously, really caught on.
The text by Alicia Garcia-Santana goes farther afield, to Jamaica, Haiti, the Canary Islands, New Orleans, St. Augustine. She even writes of the politics of the Louisiana Purchase and relentless American expansion, Manifest Destiny, etc. Her discussion focusses on styles of architecture: doorways, gardens, courtyards, porticos, roof styles, windows, staircases, even interior room arrangements. She includes discussion of early building materials: walls of earth and plant fiber, stone, wood, bricks.
Larramendi’s photos accompanying this text are, of course, gorgeous. Yes, this book belongs on every coffee table.
