The day I met Lino

On 25 September 2018 at 1pm we went to Lino Betacourt Molina's flat in Vedado, a neighbourhood I like very much in Havana. I was happy to know that we would have the sea in front of us and that we could even watch it from the interviewee's balcony. The sea and I have a special bond.

The work in question that Bohemia magazine sent me to do was about a person who had a great career and was also a journalist like us, in other words, a colleague. And I only went as a photographer. I was part of a team that consisted of a journalist from the culture department and myself.

Lino was very welcoming. A man who had already lived a lot, as you can see in these photos. He could stand on his own. And he retained his joviality. But what I did not imagine at the time was that in December of that same year, he would leave this earthly plane.

As I told you, he was a journalist, radio writer, broadcaster, musicographer. Artist of Merit of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT). In his career he also worked as a producer and editor of record notes for the Abdala Studios. He won the National Radio Award in 2007. He was a lecturer on Cuban music in American and European countries and published several books, in short, a very busy life and I suppose full of unforgettable moments.

While the journalist Tania Chappi was interviewing him, I was looking for some angles with my camera and snooping through his books.

There we can see his investigative contributions to the history of the trova and besides telling us about important events, he also referred to great exponents of this genre such as Compay Segundo.

I took those picture to have the titles of his books. I was documenting things... books that spoke of the greatness of others, about troubadours and trova itself, as you can see.

His work, on the greatness of others, is at the same time the testimony of his own greatness. Even if, like many of the troubadours he has rescued in his pages, he did not claim it. _OnCubaNews

So perhaps these photographs taken by me are part of a small ‘documented’ collection of his last moments in life. Sad...

I would like to participate with these photographs in the #Monomad Challenge and in the Portrait 117 Photofeed competition, but I don't know if I'm in time.