El hombre y su tiempo (Man and His Time), that is the title of this exhibition of photos by Alejo Carpentier, which documents some moments of his life. We can see here the locations and relationships of an existence that knew how to merge the artistic and political avant-garde from an early age.

Photos do not say everything, they are windows to the past, small cracks through which we look at a moment, which can be solemn, intimate or funny, behind which there is a story, a position taken, a commitment. Carpentier lived through the years of the rise of fascism and wrote outstanding chronicles. He did not ignore the anguished request that an old woman made to him and the intellectuals who accompanied him, in July 1937, as they passed through a small Castilian town, during the Civil War: “Defend us, you who know how to write!”

The dilemma of the intellectuals of that past time replicates today, faced with war and the resurgence of fascism in the world. To serve or only to serve oneself, to put the work, without loss of quality, at the service of Humanity, or to pursue personal salvation. In one of those chronicles, he narrated this anecdote: a man walked indifferently with a large roll of paper under his arm, while the bombs fell in Madrid, and André Malraux, the great French writer, intrigued, wanted to know what he was up to, but he answered impassively: “It is paper glued to change the one that wallpapers my room;” then, relying on that metaphor, he sentenced: in decisive times for Humanity, “there are too many intellectuals who only think about changing the papers that wallpaper their rooms.”

120 years after his birth, we not only remember the brilliant writer, but also the man we glimpse in these photos, who embraced with full awareness and willingness the challenges of his time.

*Introductory remarks at the photo exhibition El hombre y su tiempo (Man and His Time), dedicated to the great Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier on the 120^th anniversary of his birth, and inaugurated at the Espacio Abierto Art Gallery, Revolución y Cultura magazine, in the context of the day for Cuban culture.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff