Popular

Book excerpt: New from high-profile fashion photographer Thierry Le Gouès comes a lavish artist's book, Popular, an earthy, luring tome of the rarely shown Havana social scene. In Le Gouès' provocative duotone and sensuous four-color photographs, we're seduced by a culture of great joy amongst great poverty: raucous, heat-soaked street parties; spirited sparring matches in crumbling gymnasiums; voluptuous nudes plying their wares in derelict mansions; wizened balladeers savoring impossibly large Cohibas... Le Gouès' models are drawn from the street: a mixture of Buena Vista Social Club stars and underground legends, the miscegenation of which, in Le Gouès' expert fashion sense, serves to create a raw, sexy style-one of abandon out of necessity, out of a lust for life-a spirit Le Gouès sees in Cuba as ubiquitous as the cigarettes from which the book draws its name.