Joakim Eskildsen Knihy

The final volume in Joakim Eskildsen's trilogy on dysfunctional political systems Following American Realities (2016), which dealt with people living under the official poverty line in the United States after the financial collapse of 2011, and Cornwall (2018), a poetic photographic study of the county that voted for Britain to leave the European Union but would now decide otherwise, Cuban Studies is the result of Eskildsen's (born 1971) journeys between 2013 and 2016, when, accompanied by Cuban journalist Abel Gonzalez, he traveled throughout the country during a period of major transition following economic reforms. "The more I learned about Cuba," says Eskildsen, "the more difficult it became to understand. It was like learning to see the world from a different angle.... From my very first journey, Cuba put a spell on me that made me return again and again. It was a time of optimism and uncertainty, and great hopes for the future."

'Meine Güte, was für ein Land!', schwärmte Virginia Woolf und fragte sich, warum sie nicht in Cornwall lebte, diesem vom Atlantik umspülten mythischen Land am Ende der Welt. Einer Welt, die changiert zwischen Hart und Zart, zwischen zerklüfteten Rändern, überbordendem Blütenzauber und kargen Fischerdörfern. Auch Joakim Eskildsen zeigt sich fasziniert von dieser Landschaft, die vom Meer geprägt ist, vom Nebel gestreichelt, vom Regen verwöhnt, von der Sonne erheitert. Viermal reiste der dänische Fotograf nach Cornwall, und jedes Mal kehrte er mit melancholischen Bildern zurück, die uns teilhaben lassen am unvergänglichen Zauber von Land’s End.

In 2010, more Americans lived below the poverty line than at any time since 1959, when the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting this data. In 2011, Kira Pollack, Director of Photography at 'TIME', commissioned photographer Joakim Eskildsen to capture the growing crisis, affecting nearly 46.2 million Americans. Based on census data, the places with the highest poverty rates were chosen when Eskildsen, together with journalist Natasha del Toro, traveled to New York, California, Louisiana, South Dakota, and Georgia over seven months to document the lives of the people behind the statistics. The people Joakim Eskildsen has portrayed are people who struggle to make ends meet, who have lost their jobs or homes, and often live in unhealthy conditions. They usually remain invisible in the American society to which the myth of the American Dream is still very strong. Many of the people held there was no such dream anymore, merely the American Reality.