Changes at CubaSeen

Back in 2020 when we began brainstorming the publication that has become CubaSeen, we envisioned a collaborative project connecting Cuban photographers with photographers from outside the island. We published our first quarterly issue the following Summer and have been honored by the community of photographers and writers who have entrusted us with their creative work.

We have published 29 photo essays, 15 written essays, and close to 350 showcased photographs by 195 individual photographers. We’ve received submissions from photographers across the island of Cuba including Havana, Camagüey, Santiago and even remote Baracoa. We’ve enjoyed creating relationships with those images to submissions from Australia, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the US.

We are grateful to everyone who has shared in creating each of these issues. Each time you submit your imagery you become part of what has made this collaborative project possible. Four of the seven issues of the print edition are sold out and copies have reached galleries, curators, politicians, photographers, and friends of Cuba.

Three years later, as we continue to evaluate CubaSeen, we’ve decided to make some significant changes to what we’re doing. We are refocusing into directions that better align with our original mission of building relationships between artists. The most noticeable shift – in the short term at least – is moving away from a quarterly print publishing model.

Issue 08 will be our final, quarterly publication of CubaSeen. We still love seeing fine-art and the written word in print, so we plan to continue publishing print and digital editions of our zine, just on a less-frequent basis.

The exciting news is that we are transitioning CubaSeen into something unique and building on the community, experiences, and love of Cuba that has made this such a fulfilling project. We are in the process of converting our business to a nonprofit as we explore new strategies to better support building connections between artists in and beyond Cuba. Much of our planning is focused on in-person programming for visual artists (not just photographers) and writers to interact and collaborate – with follow-up publishing opportunities.

Your support for CubaSeen has meant so much to us and we are excited to move into this next chapter!