Cherchez la Femme

Cherchez la Femme brings together Luc Chessex's photographs of Cuban women, made during the fourteen years he spent living and working in Havana.

Chessex left Lausanne for Cuba in 1961, drawn by the revolution, and stayed until 1975, working as a photographer for the Ministry of Culture and as artistic director of the magazine Cuba Internacional. The photographs collected here move past political iconography to observe Cuban women directly, on the street, at work, at leisure, forming a counterpoint to the propaganda imagery more commonly associated with the period. The book, drawn from the Musee de l'Elysee's collection with text by Daniel Girardin, is presented in French and English.

The series later formed one quarter of CCCC (Castro, Coca, Che, Cherchez la Femme), a 2014 exhibition at the Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne that surveyed Chessex's Cuban years alongside his portraits of Fidel Castro and his images of Coca-Cola signage and Che Guevara iconography, situating Cherchez la Femme within his broader documentary record of the revolution.