Together, two dancers stand en pointe, poised for the next movement. They’re on a weathered Havana rooftop, hemmed in by discolored concrete and overlooking a street with a prominent pothole. In this image, Avril y Thalia en La Azotea by Leysis Quesada Vera, the artist is simply taking her life and showing it to the world. One of the dancers, the one clad in a blue tutu, is the photographer’s daughter Avril. Quesada Vera, 49, is one of nine photographers included in Foto Cuba at Artes de Cuba, a gallery that aims to give an international audience a peek behind the curtain at art and life in Cuba. The other artists in the show are René Peña, Ailen Maleta, José Manuel Fors, Raul Cañibano, Marta Maria Perez Bravo, Jennifer Rico, Arien Chang, and Nelson Ramírez de Arellano.

“I am always combining beauty and poor spaces because I grew up in the countryside,” says Quesada Vera. “I come from a poor family but also a happy childhood. I always see hope in every picture, thus why beauty and damaged buildings. Though when I take pictures I never think in damaged walls; I always see the beauty of the colors and textures.”

Quesada Vera’s models for many of her photos are her daughters Avril, who is now 19 and a dancer for the Nacional Ballet Company, and Mia, who is nearly 11 years old.

The photos chronicle different stages of the girls’ development, and many feature their Havana neighborhood, Los Sitios, as a backdrop.

“My work documents my family’s life and also my environment,” says Quesada Vera. “I have been documenting for years but when you see my portfolio, always the most important pictures are related with my family, friends, and neighborhood. I am also a mother and a housekeeper, so I am always very busy.”

Stuart Ashman, co-director of Artes De Cuba with his wife, Peggy Gaustad, had just this kind of work in mind when he opened his doors in 2022. Over time, he hopes to change Cuba’s reputation in the world.

“It’s my mission to show that Cuba is a good place,” says Ashman, who was born in Cuba before emigrating to the United States when he was 12. He didn’t return until he was 49. “It’s important for me to show the American public that Cuban artists are just like artists in this country and everywhere else. And that the quality of the art there is akin to the work that’s happening in the U.S. or in Europe or anywhere else.”

Ashman says he’s known some of the artists, like Nelson Ramírez de Arellano, for decades. Others, like Quesada Vera and Maleta, he’s just become aware of. Eighty percent of the gallery artists are based in Cuba.

It’s difficult just to get their art out of the country and into other markets. Cuba is still under a trade embargo from the United States that restricts businesses from conducting trade with Cuban entities.

But art isn’t affected, Ashman says, because it is considered informational material just like a newspaper might be. That makes it exempt from customs. But first it has to pass muster from Cuba’s patrimony office.

“When you’re leaving Cuba, you have to have paperwork from their national patrimony office to make sure that you’re not taking out something that they don’t want you to take out, like works of art that belong in museums,” Ashman says. “They go to the patrimony office with their work, and [the artists] create this kind of inventory list. Then they sign off on it. When I’m leaving, I have to stop at the patrimony office at the airport and show the paperwork.”

And once the artwork leaves Cuba? It’s rarely going back. Ashman says that the process to import art into Cuba is just too challenging, although he frequently forwards work (for the artists) to other markets in the United States.

Ramírez de Arellano says that he’s been showing his work internationally for decades.

He’s the curator and director of the Cuban National Museum and Gallery of Photography, and he says that the artists’ community in Havana is an intimate group in which nearly everyone knows each other.

Much like Quesada, Ramírez de Arellano makes his environment a star of his photography. But he tries to combine elements from both the past and the present to inform our understanding of the future.

“The major subject is time and how we perceive the past,” he says of his work. “How much do we think we know about the past, how much do we understand the present, and how do we foresee a potential future?”

To ignite these thoughts, Ramírez de Arellano finds old photographs that document a time gone by in Havana. Then he tries to locate that exact area in today’s Cuba. He takes a matching contemporary photograph and pairs the two images. But his work doesn’t end there.

“I add things. Mainly billboards because we don’t have many in Cuba. We only have ideological messages, not commercial messages,” he says. “I add mainly billboards that respond to people’s either expectations or fears about the future.

“There’s a part of the population in Cuba that would see brands like Ikea or Mcdonald’s as a sign of progress because the fact that there are billboards advertising those products would mean they are available for the people. But also part of the population in Cuba would see these billboards as a sign of increased bent of social and class differences that you’re afraid of.”

Ramírez de Arellano, 53, says that it’s interesting to go back to what Havana looked like 60 years ago, and it’s equally compelling to think about what it might look like in the future. He says that he doesn’t want to portray any hint of optimism or pessimism in his work. The images speak for themselves.

He also acknowledges that his works are a window for people who don’t get to visit Cuba to peek into their society, and he says foreigners may take away something different than Cubans from his art.

“With the Cubans, they discover in these images of the past the city in which they live that they don’t really know. But for foreigners, probably less emotional attachment,” he says. “Cuba is a very complex reality. Many people see these images of old cars from the ‘50s, and it’s like a dream come true. These luxurious cars are still running. For some other people, it may represent a good thing, but also it may represent that they never had the chance to change the vehicle.”