Steven Daiber, a book artist from Massachusetts, has been to Cuba regularly since 2001 and has facilitated dialogue between Cuban and foreign artists. Tonight, Daiber will present his most recent collaboration, El muro (Red Trillium, $60), a collection of photographs by Eduardo Hernández Santos, documenting the Cuban LGBT community. The book chronicles late-night life at Havana's utmost limit of the city: the seafront wall, popularly know as the Malecón. El muro is a significant visual source of constantly thwarted gay nightlife in Havana, but above all it is a social document about the members of a historical underclass emerging from hiding to contest efforts to control their lifestyles, to proclaim their normality and their non-conformity of the status quo. Tonight, Daiber will speak about Hernández and his work, the difficulties encountered in creating these images, and the process of turning them into a book. Hernández Santos took these photographs of homosexuals,
transgenders and crossdressers in the summer of 2005 at Havana’s seafront wall. Working only at night, he developed his film with expired chemicals and printed his images on outdated photo paper. His darkroom was his bedroom. Once Hernández made his prints, he used transfer lettering to literally press onto his images the words of the late gay Cuban poet and playwright, Virgilio Piñera. One night at 4am, on his way home, Hernández Santos was beaten and robbed of his camera. His project ended then and there. These indelible images, published here for the first time would never have seen the light of day in Cuba. 7pm