CAMAGÜEY. - Here I am, Fidel put to his image of the child in front of the monolith. Jorge Luis Sánchez Rivera was achieving what he wanted after several attempts, nevertheless, he did not check the files up to almost one year later. It was enough to put it out to the cyberspace and the snapshot of this photographer of the Magazine Bohemia became "viral".

“It was conceived in January, a little more than one month after the death of the Commander. For coverage, we went to Santiago de Cuba, and came to the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery. It was a Sunday. I was impressed by the amount of persons that was coming from far to pay tribute to Fidel Castro. I tried to receive it but this was not what he wanted. Perhaps viewfinder, brain and finger were not playing”.

Jorge Luis does a break, because he has returned to Santiago in the memory of that frustrated attempt.

“I returned around two o'clock in the afternoon. There were small groups. I positioned next where I was the first time. I proved two or three angles. At the moment, this child arises. The one who was accompanying him, it was perhaps his mom, was at little distance. I see it alone in front of the stone, extending the hand to the Commander, and the instinct was the choke”.

He tells that he remained immobile by the captivating picture of the boy before something also symbolically of another mystery, as the light of José Martí who accompanies the Cuban.

“I cannot say his name, I did not ask him about it. Neither I checked. I finished two or three things for my press organ and went away. Images remained without seeing. Next to the year of the death, I look in the files and collide with it. Cubadebate had the gentleness of publishing it on December 23 as The image of the day. Rapid it reached 3 848 LIKES and it was shared 197 times. Then, the Magazine of the Head office of Workpeople of Cuba included it in a photo story, the Revista Verde Olivo used it as a back cover, and Tribune of Havana posted it in its web. I never thought that my modest image almost was 'viral', in the good sense of the diffusion”.

The history of the photo was a bloom in his breast that he was pressing to count. After this relief luck, I am useful to ask in my attempt of portrait Jorge Luis, who declares himself a beginner of the photography.

Photo: By the authoressPhoto: By the authoress Is it a hope or is it your consternation for this infancy?

─It is hope that all the things that have been achieved continue. The message is clear: a five or six-year-old child says to the Leader that the future is insured. This tribute is logical in the persons of my generation, but not in the young people, in the children, in the present or in the next future that scarcely knew him, nevertheless they go to this place.

“The Cuban we met Fidel, but the people of other latitudes who only in some moment listened to speak about him, and that is going for to do something opposite to him confirm to us that the Commander stopped being ours to be of the world”.

The cemetery is a space that you frequent. Why?

─ In the cemetery, there is life. It has plants, animals, noise. Everything there has a message: the statues, the crosses, some detail. I think that the image is constant anywhere, only you need the eyes to see it. In that of Havana, you find works of Rita Longa, of Portocarrero, without counting the profuse work of Italian sculptors. The cemetery for me is a big museum under the sky.

These sculptures are a way of representing the pain …

─It could be. A flower that is born in a marsh does not stop being beautiful. The statues excite me and with them I achieve interesting things. It is true, a cherub represents the death of a child or an adolescent, but I look at it from the artistic point of view, because to sculpt in a stone the whole delicacy of a child... The important thing is not where you are, but the message that you take. I want that they can read it.

How was the avidity revealed in you for taking the image?

─I was impressed by the images of the newspapers and the magazines. I was wondering how they were done. On having grown up, I read more, knew some friend of this media, and I got my first camera, kidling, digitalis, approximately 20 years ago. One day walking I saw a poster with the signs of the School of Art and Photo Cabrales del Valle. I went two times a week, Monday and Friday, from six to eight of the night.

“I began looking at exhibitions, movies. Then I felt the need to take to the practice what they had taught me. I was going out with a little notebook and took notes: ' I did at this speed, with this gap, it did not work out for me like that; later I tried with …’ until I managed to handle the light. With the time you learn to sharpen your instinct, your eye, to center more on the things”.

You are a reporter recently: why did you come to the press means?

─En 2012 I did the photo story I am in danger, on the swimmers in the levee of Havana, who, on having been thrown, from approximately four meters high, were doing dangerous twirls in a reefs area. I touched a door that I have always continued: the Magazine Bohemia. The photo chief received me without knowing me. He did not promise anything, but he called me to say to me that it would be published and to ask me if I was willing to collaborate for free. I was almost one year without perceiving salary.

“In fact, my first official press organ was a Tribune of Havana. There I overturned all this energy, my longing for knowing. It served to me as much, first of all, to demonstrate me that it was neither a caprice nor an excitement of the mment. I was willing to any coverage. My bogey is wide. I have not wanted to classify myself”.

But one notices that there are areas where you always return. Do you recognize it?

─ The ballet pleases me very much. Also the concerts, because they serve to me to play with the lights. I do not feel that my sport images are what I would like. The baseball needs the daily practice. If you remove the sight of the area the move happens, and that one does not recur never again. I like concentrating on what I do and, especially, I put myself very high goals. Perhaps I do not achieve it, but I try it. I compete with myself to feel satisfied when I end. I trouble when one day did not achieve anything.

We live in the world of the image. Before the obsession of the current man to leave this trace: where do you place to the professional as you?

─We are in the epoch of the digital cameras, of the satellite phones. In any moment, you do an image and upload it to the social networks. It is very complicated if you want, at least, that your image is supported. It is necessary to be in the precise moment, and to be able to press the choke. The example of the photo of Korda. How many persons were looking at the Che? Nevertheless, Korda could take this look, this fleeting moment that immortalized him. In the coverage, there are 10 or 12 photographers in a limited space, and no photo is equal. Everyone has his vision and expresses in this moment what he feels.

El digital space gives the sensation of publishing an image "faithful" to original. What do the impressions provoke to you in your traditional way?

─There is the image on the screen of your camera, and the one that you see in the monitor of your computer. When it is printed on paper, sometimes your scale of gray does not correspond to that of the machine; the ink is not, but it comes closer to your image. The web pages put your photo just as it is. In a Bohemia, which has 100 thousand copies, perhaps in the first throws it goes out equally, but perhaps for a moment of change of ink, for something of the technological process it gets lost a little.

─ You still live in the astonishment with the photography. Experts make sure that the type of camera determines the look. Have you thought about that?

─ To deny the skill would be to deny everything. Of the first cameras to the current ones, there is a big difference, but it continues the same pattern: the light is the photo. You can have good teams but if you do not have the eye, your images would not happen of being mediocre. That needs study. Many things determine you, for example, you cannot achieve an image at eight o'clock in the morning and at twelve o'clock of the day in an open place. If you do not know how to handle the light, what gap to give it …

I was asking you in another sense. How not to lose the light of your context?

─The digital cameras includes the Japanese inside. In addition, they have other options, and you can give the parameters. There is the person with a compact camera that goes out to take images of an excursion, and there is another person in the same excursion, and for his knowledge she is a proprietor of the camera, she manipulates speed, opening of the diaphragm, looks for the precise moment. Yes, the team helps you very much, but if you have no talent … you will be a slave of the program that “does everything”. When you work manual, it is you who are wrong.

Photo: By the authoressPhoto: By the authoress

The impact of your photo of the child motivated our dialogue, but I infer another pretext. Why do you insist on painting the portrait of Camagüey?

─I am in love with the city of Camagüey. As my press organ, I have had the happiness of knowing many cities. There are two that call me greatly the attention. One is Camagüey, and other one, Trinidad. It is necessary to dedicate Camagüey five days to make something specific. The same place gives you different images according to the hour. It has fabulous things: churches, streets with paving stones, grills in the doors, the fronts, the tiles, its people. It is a mystical city where a different air is breathed. Perhaps take neither a levee nor an acropolis as Havana, but it catches.

It is said that the Camagüey´s citizen does not open the doors of his house to the whole world, and that he does not give himself until he knows you. What do you think?

─Kidness, gentleness, hospitality. I have received everything. My companions turn his in yours, with the smile in the lips. By the streets, the persons greet me without knowing me. That is strange in the city from which I come. I have been astonished because at eight o'clock in the night in a main street I have found 10 or 12 persons. I like this calmness, this peace to the gait. I am a simple stranger in a ground that it is not mine. I have not taken tinajón water, but I like to return. I feel that they have opened the doors to me.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez