Cultural landscapes in translation - Donna Oglesby Photography

Faded Past (Havana)

Artist Statement: Rooted in Place (Ongoing)

After a lifetime of soaking and poking in foreign fields, I came home to tend my garden. I needed some slow time to digest my experiences, let my thoughts settle and create room for new understandings and insights to arise. My photographic work blooms from the unfolding of my discoveries.

On occasion, I venture out of my garden to travel again abroad. I know as Wisława Szymborska reminds us in her poem Psalm (1976) that I will be crossing a boundary into the foreign.

Only what is human can truly be foreign.

The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.

When I do travel, I seek, through my work, to widen the repertoire of ways we can feel and can communicate feelings to others in order to care for the planet we share. I bring the distinct cultural layer into focus to glimpse our shared humanity beneath.

These images capture my impressions of Cuba in February 2019.