Hilary Duffy

HILARY DUFFY (New York, 1969).
Untitled. Cuba, 1999.
Color photograph.
Signed, dated, and labeled “Cuba” on the back.
Measurements: 31 x 24 cm (image); 54 x 47 cm (frame).

This photograph marks the beginning of the extensive body of work that Hilary Duffy developed around Cuba over nearly two decades—a body of work focused on daily life and later compiled in the editorial project *Hopes & Dreams from Cuba*, featuring images taken between 1999 and 2017.

Her perspective moves away from the island’s tourist iconography to focus on immediate human situations and the experience of the street. Duffy constructs the image from a seemingly spontaneous situation, combining documentary observation with a precise attention to the relationships between figure, space, and color. This intimate approach to Cuban life has been a constant throughout her career and forms the core of *Hopes & Dreams from Cuba*, published by Daylight Books in 2019 with an essay by Jon Lee Anderson.

Hilary Duffy trained in the documentary photography and photojournalism program at the International Center of Photography in New York and was twice awarded the Johnson & Johnson/ICP Fellowship. Her professional relationship with Cuba spanned many years, culminating in her directing the Havana Youth Photo Course in 2003. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Zimmerli Art Museum, the United Nations headquarters in New York, and the World Bank in Washington. Her extensive photographic research on the island culminated in *Hopes & Dreams from Cuba* (2019), a publication that brings together nearly two decades of work on Cuban society.