Laura Portilla Arias

Laura Portilla Arias is currently studying at Havana’s Superior Institute of Industrial Design.  Photography is her great passion and has recently led to an exhibition at Cuba’s International Institute of Photojournalism.  This body of work, 3 mil silencios, documents the once crowded Presidio Modelo on the Isla de la Juventud, a prison turned museum that housed Cuban leader Fidel Castro after he led the failed 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks.

Her work is influenced by the greats of Cuban photography - Korda, Salas, Fernandez and Corrales but it also resonates with the Russian Constructivist style of photography epitomised by the work of Alexander Rodchenko.  Light and shadow combine to create high contrast images full of sharp angles, emphasizing the stark nature of the architecture.  The work is printed on silk giving it an ethereal beauty in counterpoint to these buildings’ dark and foreboding history.