Herman Puig (born German Puig Paredes; 25 February 1928 in

Sagua La Grande Sagua la Grande (nicknamed ''La Villa del Undoso'', sometimes shortened in Sagua) is a municipality located on the north coast of the province of Villa Clara in central Cuba, on the Sagua la Grande River. The city is close to Mogotes de Juma ...

– 25 January 2021 in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

) was the founder of the first Cinemateca de Cuba and pioneer of male nude photography. Born in

Havana, Cuba Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

, where he began his early work, his ascendance comes from Catalonia. He rose to fame in France.

Biography

Early years

He studied painting and sculpture in Cuba and filmed his first short "Sarna" before leaving for Paris at the age of 20 where he studied Audio Visual Techniques. In 1950 he worked for Henri Langlois director and co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française. This association lead to the foundation of the original Cinemateca de Cuba, officialised as an institution in 1948, and founded by Herman Puig and Ricardo Vigón, which would later be reborn in 1961 with the initiative of Alfredo Guevara and the then newly formed ICAIC as today's Cuba Cinemateca. Puig, along with a group that included Carlos Franqui, the future ICAIC cameraman Ramón F. Suárez, and the writers Edmundo Desnoes and

Guillermo Cabrera Infante Guillermo Cabrera Infante (; Gibara, 22 April 1929 – 21 February 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, screenwriter, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín, and used Guillermo Cain for the screenplay of th ...

(''

Tres tristes tigres Tres tristes tigres may refer to: * Three Sad Tigers, a 1968 Chilean drama film, based on the play * Tres tristes tigres (play), a play by Alejandro Sieveking, based on the novel * Tres tristes tigres (novel) ''Tres tristes tigres'' ( es, Tres ...

'') made a number of short films. Herman Puig, together with Carlos Franqui, made a short film (Carta de una madre, ''Letter to a mother''). Puig and

Edmundo Desnoes Edmundo Desnoes (Havana, Cuba, 1930), is a Cuban writer author of the novel ''Memorias del subdesarrollo'' (''Memories of Underdevelopment''), a complex story depicting the alienation of a Cuban bourgeois intellectual struggling to adapt to the p ...

also made a short, ''Sarna'' (1952), which was produced and edited by cinematographer Ramón F. Suárez.

Cinema to Male Nude Photography

In October 1950 Herman Puig travelled to Paris where he met with

Henri Langlois Henri Langlois (; 13 November 1914 – 13 January 1977) was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often c ...

, the director of the Cinémathèque Française. Their first encounter was brief but decisive as Henri Langlois agreed to supply him with French films for their Cinema Club of Havana (the early Cinemateca de Cuba) but on the condition that their small Cinema Club became an official institution as the Cinémathèque Française could only legally exchange films with a similar institution. Unforeseen political elements resulted in the closure of the Cinemateca a few months later and it would not open again until 1961, but Herman's love affair with France was cemented, along with his place in Cuban Cinema history. From the 60s to the 70s Puig worked in advertising as a photographer and publicity filmmaker in Spain. It was in Madrid that he first started experimenting with male nudes but was arrested in an alleged drugs affair and charged as a pornographer under the climate of the socialist government. It was at this point that he moved to Paris in an attempt to prove to Spain and the world that he was not a pornographer but an artist and was accepted with almost universal acclaim. A little later he moved to Barcelona where he remains to this day.

Modern Herman

Herman Puig was made the subject of a film by David Boisseaux-Chical about his cultural exile from Cuba. In the film he continues to affirm his dislike at being associated with the worlds of pornography and homosexuality, simply for wanting to photograph male bodies as art instead of that of women. Puig recently spoke out along in his conference with author Zoé Valdés in Palma de Mallorca about beauty and art and the restrictions placed upon expression in Cuba.

The Hidden Cinemateca

Puig often stated that he was the original founder of the Cinemateca de Cuba, stating that the ICAIC, with the goal of making the myth live that the history of Cuban cinema began with the creation of the ICAIC in 1959, has hidden the truth from sight. The attempted suppression of his involvement, along with that of Ricardo Vigón, from history for political means has aided in sheltering Herman from the Cuban community as he frequently refuses to exhibit his work in Cuba in fear of his being mistaken as a sympathizer with the Communist regime. El Ateneo de Madrid officially acknowledged them as the founders of the Cinemateca de Cuba with a tribute to German Puig in October 2009.Steno Madrid

Death

Herman Puig died on 25 January 2021, one month short from his 93rd birthday.

References

Notes

External links

* Juan Cru
"Herman Puig fotografía el desnudo masculino"
June 13, 1979, ''elPais'' (Spanish)
Herman speaks out in Majorca with Zoe Valdes
, April 2008, ''DiarioDeMallorca'' (Spanish) {{DEFAULTSORT:Puig, Herman 1928 births 2021 deaths Cuban expatriates in France Cuban male painters Cuban photographers