What's up everyone, welcome back to another episode of Sombra Y Cultura. If this is your first time listening, welcome in.

Today, we're heading to Havana, Cuba, to talk about photographer Lisandra Álvarez, whose work is rooted in the everyday lives of the people around her. She photographs neighborhoods, homes, streets, and the small moments that can be easy to overlook when we're moving through our own lives.

Lisandra works with both analog and digital photography, but film plays an important role in how she approaches a scene. She has described herself as someone who needs to connect with the people she photographs. Sometimes that connection begins with a conversation. Other times, it's a brief exchange or simply the feeling that a moment means something.

Her photographs aren't just about showing us what Havana looks like. They're about the people who live there, the spaces they occupy, and the emotions that exist within those spaces.

We'll talk about her beginnings, her approach to documentary photography, and projects including Sueño Profundo, which earned her recognition from the Lucie Foundation in 2025. We'll also look at what her work can teach us about patience, connection, and finding our own way of seeing.

Lisandra Álvarez Valdés was born in Havana in 1998. Alongside her photography, she's a graphic designer and has worked as a professor of typography and photography at Cuba's Higher Institute of Design, known as ISDI.

Her path into photography wasn't necessarily a straightforward one. In an interview with Street Macadam, she explained that she started becoming more interested in photography around 2018 and 2019. She was surrounded by friends who photographed, and watching their relationship with the camera encouraged her to explore the medium herself.

At first, she was focused on her university studies, and photography wasn't something she was doing consistently. She also explained that her surroundings didn't initially inspire her to take pictures. That changed as she began spending more time photographing in Centro Habana and Habana Vieja, two historic neighborhoods in the Cuban capital.

As her interest grew, she wanted to learn more about photography and the people who had shaped it. Accessing information online in Cuba could be difficult at the time, so she sometimes went to a park with Wi-Fi to download material about photographers and their work. She also learned from friends, asking questions and developing her understanding through practice.

I think that part of her story is worth mentioning because it reminds us that learning photography doesn't always happen in a classroom or through a carefully planned career path. Sometimes, it starts with being curious about what the people around you are doing, looking at work that moves you, and trying to understand why it affects you.

Over time, Lisandra developed a documentary approach centered on intimacy and human connection. Rather than treating the street as a place to collect quick snapshots, she uses it to find stories she wants to spend time with.

One of the things that stands out about Lisandra's work is her relationship with analog photography.

She works with 35mm and medium-format film, as well as digital photography. Film, however, seems especially suited to the way she likes to work. In her Street Macadam interview, she explained that she's selective about when she presses the shutter. She's even returned home without taking a photograph.

That might sound surprising in a world where we can take hundreds of digital images in a single afternoon. But it tells us something about her process. She's not necessarily looking to photograph everything she sees. She wants to recognize a moment that connects with her, and she gives herself permission to wait for it.

Lisandra has also explained that she doesn't really see herself as a traditional street photographer. She describes her work as intimate documentary photography because she often needs some kind of connection with the people in her images. That might be a short conversation, a small interaction, or a visual exchange before she takes the picture.

That distinction matters. A photograph can show us a person standing in a room or walking down a street, but the image becomes more compelling when we begin to sense the life around that person. What is the atmosphere? What does the space tell us? What might we notice if we take another moment to look?

Her work often moves between black and white and color. She has said that she generally prefers black and white, while color needs to contribute something beyond composition. For Sueño Profundo, though, color plays an important role. The warmth of the water, the atmosphere along Havana's seawall, and the people gathering there are part of the project's feeling.

She has also spoken about the role her own emotions play in her photography. In a statement shared by Street Macadam, she explained that being in touch with her own feelings helps her recognize them in other people. Compassion, tenderness, sadness, and fear can all guide her toward a photograph.

For Lisandra, then, technique is only part of the process. The other part is learning to recognize what moves you, and being present enough to see when that feeling appears in someone else's life.

One project that gives us a strong sense of Lisandra's approach is Sueño Profundo, which translates to Deep Dream.

The project began during the summer of 2025. Lisandra spent time along Havana's Malecón, the seawall beside the sea, photographing people swimming and gathering along the shore. According to her project statement, the work responds to a phenomenon that had become possible again after years of prohibition: swimming along this stretch of Havana's coast.

But the project isn't simply a record of people going into the water. Lisandra connects the sea with the dreams, faith, and hopes of the people who come there. She photographs those who look toward the horizon as if imagining another life, or who allow themselves a moment of relief from whatever they carry with them.

The sea becomes more than a location. It's a shared space where people can pause, dream, and feel connected to something larger than their immediate circumstances.

Lisandra photographed the project using 35mm and 120 film, aiming to preserve the spontaneity of the swimmers and the emotional atmosphere of the Malecón. In 2025, Sueño Profundo won the Lucie Foundation's Emerging Photojournalism and Documentary Scholarship. The project also received an honorable mention in the Eyeshot Open Call and the Sarabia Studio Award.

That recognition helped bring the project to a wider audience, but the subject itself remains grounded in an ordinary part of life in Havana: people going to the water, spending time together, and finding meaning in a familiar place.

Another important part of Lisandra's work is her ongoing documentary practice in Centro Habana. Since 2022, she has been photographing a children's neighborhood circus called Cirhabana. The children aren't professional performers. It's a place they attend after school, where they play, move, and explore what their bodies can do.

Lisandra has described the circus as a challenging environment to photograph. There's a great deal happening at once, and the space is dark, which makes working with film more difficult. She's also interested in finding a more abstract way of photographing the space, rather than simply documenting each activity as it happens.

She has also been documenting a home where women and young children live. Both projects reflect her interest in spaces that people inhabit every day, and in the stories that emerge when a photographer returns and spends time observing.

Her series Barrio Habana has also been exhibited, including at the Distancia Focal festival in Xalapa, Mexico, in 2024. Her work has appeared in exhibitions in Cuba and internationally, including the Women Street Photographers exhibition and the Latin American Foto Festival at the Bronx Documentary Center.

In 2024, she received recognition through the Leica Women Street Foto Project and Women Street Photographers. In 2025, alongside her Lucie Foundation scholarship, she received the Young Talent Award presented by Fototeca de Cuba. In 2026, she was awarded a photography residency through the Bernard Grau Foundation, the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

These milestones are significant, especially for a photographer whose work is so closely connected to a particular place and community. But the projects themselves show us what she continues to return to: people, daily life, and the emotional details that can reveal something deeper about a place.

Lisandra's work offers a perspective on Cuba that doesn't depend on turning the country into a postcard or relying on familiar images of its streets and buildings.

In her Street Macadam interview, she discussed how photographs made by visitors can sometimes remain at a distance from the lives of the people being photographed. She believes that spending more time in a place, returning repeatedly, and getting to know people can lead to a more intimate understanding.

That doesn't mean there's only one way to photograph Cuba, or that someone has to be born in a place to make meaningful work there. But Lisandra's approach reminds us that familiarity can be a starting point, not the end of the story. Even a place we think we know can reveal something new when we look more carefully.

Her work also draws attention to the practical challenges of pursuing photography in Cuba. She has spoken about the expense and difficulty of obtaining film and other analog supplies, as well as the pressure to earn a living while finding time to develop personal projects. For photographers working with film, those limitations can affect how often they can shoot and how long they can sustain a project.

At the same time, Lisandra continues to build bodies of work and share them beyond Havana. Her awards, exhibitions, and residency show that intimate stories rooted in a specific community can connect with audiences elsewhere without losing their local character.

I think one of the most useful lessons we can take from Lisandra's work is that we don't need to photograph everything.

It's easy to feel that we should always be shooting, especially when we see photographers constantly sharing new images online. But Lisandra's willingness to return home without a photograph reminds us that looking is part of the work, too. We can spend time observing, learning a place, and understanding what actually draws our attention.

Another lesson is to build relationships with the people we photograph. A quick image can have value, but connection can open the door to a different kind of photograph. Taking the time to listen, returning to the same place, and letting people become more than strangers in the frame can change the way we see them.

Her work also reminds us to use our own emotions thoughtfully. We all respond to different things. One photographer might be drawn to tenderness, another to tension, another to joy or uncertainty. Instead of trying to copy somebody else's style, we can pay attention to what genuinely makes us stop and look.

And finally, there's the value of staying with a project. Lisandra's ongoing work with the children's circus and the home where women and children live shows how a body of work can develop over time. You don't always understand a project at the beginning. Sometimes, the meaning becomes clearer through returning, observing, and allowing the work to grow.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS

What I keep coming back to with Lisandra is the idea that a photograph begins before you ever press the shutter.

It begins with paying attention. With being willing to spend time somewhere, to notice the people and details that others might pass by, and to recognize why something affects you in the first place.

I also appreciate that she doesn't seem interested in making every photograph complicated. She talks about wanting an image to say more than what's immediately visible. I think that's a good reminder for anyone working with a camera. A photograph doesn't need to explain everything. Sometimes, it just needs to make us curious enough to stay with it.

Her work in Havana feels personal without losing sight of the people and places she's photographing. And with Sueño Profundo, something as familiar as people swimming by the seawall becomes a way to think about hope, escape, and the things people carry inside themselves.

For me, that's a meaningful part of documentary photography: finding a way to make an everyday moment feel worth our attention, without forcing it to become something it isn't.

That brings us to the end of this episode on Lisandra Álvarez. I hope this gave you a better understanding of her work and the way she approaches documentary photography.

I'll have links here to Lisandra's official portfolio, her projects, and additional resources for anyone who wants to spend more time with her photographs. (Lisandra's Website, her Instagram, Street Macadam Coverage, and Eyeshot 2025 Open Call)

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Sombra Y Cultura on your favorite podcast platform, leave a rating or review, and share it with another photographer or someone who enjoys learning about photography and visual culture. It really helps more people find the podcast.

Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.