Janet Sternburg

JANET STERNBURG's images of Cuba were shot at the end of 2003, during her first trip to Cuba. Already recognized in APERTURE and ART JOURNAL for her photographs of windows in Mexico, Sternburg went to Cuba believing it would yield similar treasures. She did find complex reflections; however, she also found something else.   A poet of words and images, Sternburg says, "I see my Cuba photographs as images of change itself. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't make a political statement about Cuba - I don't know enough. But I could almost taste the flavor of change, and recognize its ambiguities." Shadows painted on a wall; a chair seat doubling as a cooking grill; a frog interred in a Santeria museum…none of this can be pinned down. In Sternburg's work, a space is left open, suspended for what might - or might not - happen.  

Her photographs are not the result of digital manipulation or double exposures, superimposition or collage. Sternburg stands in these places and finds these images. Working with a disposable camera, attracted especially to reflection, she takes her viewers into a physical and mental landscape of "fertile confusion between inside and outside, solid and fluid. We need our boundaries," she says, "to help us negotiate the world, but keeping them rigidly defined isn't sufficient to the richness of our experience."