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LA Times: A Step Back In Time, Cuba

Gail Fisher for The Los Angeles Times-All Rights Reserved
Here's another multimedia feature from The Los Angeles Times. This one is on Cuba, and the photographs and narration are by Gail Fisher, who's the Senior Photo Editor for the newspaper.

Gail has spent the past twenty years of her career traveling extensively throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South and Central America covering social issues, and has won numerous awards.

I expected much more from such a renowned photographer/editor, but the feature verges on a 'ho-hum' collection of photographs of Cuba that any photographer without Gail's experience and access could have easily captured. A few photographs stand out (like the one above), but the large majority are pedestrian. Although Cuba receives over 2,000,000 tourists a year, only 40,000 are from the United States and are generally not tourists but journalists and human rights staff, so who is the target of this consumer-oriented travel feature...our Canadian neighbors?

As Gail says, Cuba has a legendary mystique which makes it a great tourist destination. Yes, we know and most of us want to go! As I wrote in an earlier post, how can anyone justify political isolation, impose economic sanctions and literally prevent its citizens to visit this enchanting island because of trumped up political ideology is beyond comprehension.

Here's Gail Fisher's A Step Back In Time, Cuba