Review by Lee Halvorsen •
A gripping tale of friendship and a hidden land is preserved in this story with stunning images from Cuba some thirty years ago. DeStefano traveled to Cuba in 1993 and again in 1996, during Cuba’s “Special Period” where everything for Cuba’s common person was hard to get…food, gasoline, currency, and work. Despite difficult travel and entry procedures into Cuba in 1996, DeStefano met his friend and guide, Juan de Mata Montero Reyes in Santiago, Cuba’s southernmost city. Together they traveled on back roads, through mountains, forests, and villages of seldom seen Cuba, north to Havana. The images from the two trips are gathered in this book, combined with the story of their journey, their friendship, and a discovery of the seldom experienced Cuban countryside.
The images are taken with several cameras including 35mm but mostly with large format machines producing stunning, gripping images of places and people. Their mode of transportation through the difficult terrain was a 1952 Willy’s Jeep, a mechanical mule stopping, stalling, breaking, crawling always hungry for gasoline that was very expensive when it could be found. Juan was not only a friend and guide, but a seasoned mechanic specializing in keeping that 40 year old Jeep running; many of DeStefano’s tales are tense, pressure filled episodes of looking for fuel, fixing unfixable parts, dealing with stern soldiers and day-to-day stress from moving cross country in a place where such things were uncommon. But the theme of their travels was the genuineness of the people they met in remote parts of the island. The minister who brought them into his family’s home, offered them food and a place to stay despite the hardships they endured daily. The peacefulness of meeting farmers bringing their horses to the water at the end of the day.
DeStefano’s images celebrate the lives of those he met. Despite many hardships, the lack of what we might call essentials, the Cubans were making do by getting along, helping one another and looking at their community instead of just themselves. People greet each other with smiles, greeting the two traveling strangers with food, drink, and a place to stay. DeStefano’s images capture those moments in wonderful black and white with superb tones and shading.
This is no travelogue and it’s more than a documentary, it’s human drama unfolding with people and places not often seen. The images and story are human emotion, human coping, human-with-human doing good things with each other. As Juan told his friend: “We are men who come from the islands. Unlike so many others in this world, when we look out, all we see is horizon.”
This book, the story and the images gave me a brief glimpse of what the real Cuba might be. Not from the news or social media or political diatribe, but from friends who traveled the backroads and met the real people of Cuba. Easy to read with well laid out text and images but mostly a joy to feel the emotion in the images and story.
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Lee Halvorsen is assistant editor, writer and visual artist living in Virginia.
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The Magic Hour…La Hora Mágica, A Photographer’s Journeys Through Cuba by Lorenzo DeStefano
Artist: Lorenzo DeStefano
Text and Story: Lorenzo DeStefano
Copyright images and text Lorenzo DeStefano ©2026
Publisher: Amaurea Press, London
Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd
Language: English and Spanish
Hardcover 184 pages, 28 x 16 cm, ISBN 9781914278907
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