Shawn Walker, Women in the Field, Cuba, 1968

Narrator: Shawn Walker took this photograph while traveling in Cuba for an organization called Third World Newsreel. Its mission was to document stories that the mainstream media neglected. While traveling, Walker also continued his own artistic work. 

Shawn Walker: When I knew that I was going to Cuba, I kept trying to ask people that I knew what visually I’d be seeing. Nobody answered the question until I got there and all they had to do is say “the South.” Anytime you got agrarian society people got axes and picks and hoes and stuff like that. And that’s what it was. For me it was another thing that showed me about the African-ness of us as a people. You never understood that Brazil and Cuba had the largest Black population out of all the countries, where all the slaves went to.

You know there’s a thing called “mind’s eye.” And I remember, when for me the realization of that was when I took a picture and in my mind I saw the picture, I saw the print, I knew how I was going to print it. And I think that that photograph was just me imagining the South.