Fernando López Junque

Chinolope is a great photographer and lives at the end of a hallway in Marianao. Chinolope is nearly 90 years old and, if we look at it a certain way, has been forgotten. He has no hope left but his wife.

Chinolope lives with Esperanza Rodríguez, his wife. Esperanza is a woman of great culture, acquired in Paris, a city where she lived for around ten years and from which she brought a Bachelor's degree from La Sorbona and a strange way of pronouncing the letter r. Esperanza knows Chino's work almost as well as he does.

Isabel Junqué and Inochi Guendai were the parents of Fernando López Junque, Chinolope. Isabel was a very beautiful mulatta woman who made a living singing. Inochi was a Japanese man who mysteriously arrived in Cuba by boat. After meeting Isabel, they went to live together in Jesús María, a neighborhood in Old Havana, where in a small house the Chino was born in 1932, although he appeared registered in 1937. Inochi's stay in Havana was less than brief.

His childhood was full of difficulties, especially economic ones. Together with his mother, they moved so many times that they almost traveled all over Havana. To combat misery and because of his characteristic restlessness, from age five he dedicated himself to selling newspapers, and that's how he learned to write. At first, being unable to read the headlines, the other boys would make fun of him by switching them for other false ones, which he innocently hawked. He never attended school.

He went to the United States in a small plane. He left from the Helicopter House that was in Old Havana, near the Sloppy Joe's. A friend helped him. In those days it was very easy, you didn't need a passport or visa or anything. They gave you any passport (fake). At first he had a hard time in New York, wandering the streets, until he met Tatica, who was a musician descended from Cubans and Puerto Ricans, with whom he became great friends. When Tatica finished playing in the different cabarets, he would go down to the audience and take photos of those present, and then sell them. One day he told him: "Chino, even a child can take a photo, all you need to have is sensitivity."

He begins his photographic work in New York, while going back and forth from Cuba to the United States. He collaborates with Life, Time, and Paris Match, among other publications.

On October 25, 1957, Chinolope heard tremendous gunshots. Albert Anastasia, leader of the Gambino crime family, one of the five that controlled New York's mafia, had just been murdered in the barbershop of the Sheraton Hotel.

Chinolope started pressing the shutter without stopping. At that moment a man grabbed him by the shoulder, put him in a car, and took him to a dark room. He still knew almost nothing about photography and thought he had ruined it. But the man told him: "look, you took this photo. You have talent, you bastard. What do we do with you?" He was in shock. It seemed unheard of to the man that he had taken that photo. Then he pulled two thousand dollars out of his pocket and gave them to him, which in those days was a fortune, really. The next day Life published the photo, which indirectly opened a door for Chino in the famous magazine, where his images would continue to appear gradually.

This is how his photographic work in New York begins, while going back and forth from Cuba to the United States. He collaborates with Life, Time, and Paris Match, among other publications. He never lived in New York full time, he never abandoned Cuba. In those days he was constantly coming and going, it was very easy. What marks his definitive return to Havana is the death of Tatica, apparently drugs killed him.

He secretly took a photo of Santo Trafficante. The photo was published in Life on a full page, but the Batista regime didn't find it convenient for those images to appear. They didn't want graphic documents that linked them to the underworld. Chinolope, in late 1950s Havana, was already a photographer with some recognition.

With American photographer Andrew Saint George, he went up to the Sierra. There he photographed some of the bearded rebels. He met Fidel, Raúl, and Che. All the photos taken were attributed to Saint George. Furthermore, these two photographers were at the Battle of Santa Clara, on the roof of what is now the Santa Clara Libre hotel. Aleida March confirms this in her memoir book Evocación.

From 1959 onwards, his photographs appeared in INRA magazine and later in Cuba, Cine Cubano, La Gaceta de Cuba, Revolución y Cultura, Casa de las Américas, El Caimán Barbudo, Unión, and more recently Opus Habana.

In the 1960s he creates micro documentaries, including Temporada en el ingenio, which is also the title of the book he published in 1985 with an introductory essay by José Lezama Lima.

Alongside his photographic adventures, in 1961 Chino met perhaps the most influential person in his life, José Lezama Lima. Chinolope has been described on certain occasions as an "excellent photographer of writers," and although his work is much more varied, he is grateful to Lezama for being his strongest bridge to the world of literature.

–"Do you know how I met Lezama?" –he asks mischievously in an interview–: "looking for books in a bookstore on O'Reilly. In those days I was reading him, and because his language was so loaded with symbols it was hard for me to understand. So I took the opportunity to ask the bookseller to explain one of those metaphors to me. He told me that Lezama Lima was a metaphor as a person, and pointing toward the door added: 'look, there he is, ask him yourself.' I approached with some shyness and told him: 'master, I want you to explain this to me,' to which he replied: 'that has no explanation, only time can explain it.' I was astonished."

After the Revolution, his most significant works were those he did by commission from Celia Sánchez to "capture the reality and representative figures of that era," which is why he traveled throughout Cuba. These photos became the beginning of Estudios Revolución. Chinolope was upset about having to deliver not only the images but also the negatives of these, which deprived him of the rights to the photographs. Celia, in those years when altruism was more common than we can imagine today, argued that the photos didn't belong to him, but to the homeland, an explanation that Chino has never fully accepted. As a result, today much of his work doesn't belong to him, he receives no compensation for it, and in many cases, not even credit.

At the Che's request, Chinolope did one of his most representative works. Guevara asked him to go to the sugar mills, infiltrate himself among the workers until he became one of them, seeking an empathy between the photographer and the laborers, arguing that this was the only way he could authentically portray the reality of the industry. From this experience, the book Temporada en el Ingenio emerged, with a prologue by Lezama Lima.

The book took 17 years to be published, from 1970, when it was completed, until 1987, the date of the first and only Cuban edition it has had.

With the support of Haydee Santamaría –who was his boss thanks to Chino's connection to Casa de las Américas– he managed to organize an exhibition at the National Library called Espejo en la Plenitud. Figures such as José Antonio Portuondo, Alejo Carpentier, Father Ángel Gaztelu, Alicia Alonso, and Chino himself appear in the photo hanging in a discreet frame in his house's living room, taken presumably on the day of the exhibition's opening.

Chinolope photographed Cortázar several times, and a sincere friendship united them. In fact, the book dedicated to the author of Rayuela on the 100th anniversary of his birth has as its cover the famous image that Chino took of him on the Havana waterfront. For his part, it is said that the character in the story Las babas del diablo was inspired by the Cuban photographer. Cortázar was a faithful defender of Chino during the times when the bureaucracy was most harsh with him.

In 1998 he published El espíritu de Cuba (Durnay editions, Paris) together with French photographer Eric Lobo, and 20 of his photographs were included in José Lezama Lima (Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, 2001). He participated in the exhibition held in Paris in 2003 dedicated to the figure of Ernesto Che Guevara.

Chinolope is a photographer of the analog era. Many of his photos have not even been digitalized. Most of his work, at least what still belongs to him, is preserved in negatives, which have been deteriorating little by little due to the humid conditions in which his home is found, where there really is no ventilation of any kind. A large portion of his photographic files remain unexplored.

Chinolope has photographed Tennessee Williams, in the United States and in Cuba. He has photographed Virgilio Piñera, Fidel Castro, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Ernesto Guevara, Víctor Manuel, Wifredo Lam, Sindo Garay, Cesar Portillo de la Luz, Carlos Fuentes, René Portocarrero, Celia Sánchez, Julio Cortázar, Albert Anastasia, Lezama Lima, El Chori, Yuri Lotman, Flora Fong, Santo Trafficante, Roque Dalton, Raúl Castro, El Caballero de París, Cabrera Infante, Severo Sarduy, Alicia Alonso, Eduardo Galeano, Haydee Santamaría, and himself.

Exhibitions
1970-Art room of the National Library José Martí "temporada en el ingenio," thesis work on the man-machine relationship in various sugar mills. Testimony of the strength of the worker and the machine.
1972-Art room of the National Library José Martí "espejo de una plenitud," photographic work on prima Ballerina Absoluta Alicia Alonso, with words by Alejo Carpentier. He subsequently travels abroad.
1975-Art room of the "Habana Libre" hotel, screening of his mini documentary, temporada en el ingenio.
1976-Casa de la Cultura Plaza (former Liceum of Havana). Photographic exhibition of Roque Dalton.
1996-Palacio de los Capitanes Generales (Museum of the City of Havana). La mirada fluida; with a series of photos from his enormous work on José Lezama Lima.
2001-Personal exhibition at the Fototeca de Cuba. Temporada en el Ingenio, with screening of his homonymous mini-documentary. Havana.
2002-Pressure and Diamond, with photos of Virgilio Piñeira. RM gallery Cuban Institute of the Book City of Havana.
2002-Hidden Visions, collective photography exhibition on the life and work of Wifredo Lam. Wifredo Lam Center. Havana.
2003-Exhibited at the Meomontpornasse Museum in an exhibition held for the 75th anniversary of Che.
March 31 to April 4, he exhibited at the Amians Pilardi Superior School of Commerce, France.
Publications and Books
1986- Temporada en el Ingenio, which brings together his photos of sugar workers and machines. Text by José Lezama Lima.
1998-Book jointly with French photographer Eric Lobo "El espíritu de Cuba," Du May Edition, Paris, France.
2001 Jose Lezama Lima, Círculo de bellas Artes, Madrid (Includes cover and more than twenty photographs by him).
Awards and Recognition
2002 Olorum Prize 2001, for his artistic career, Cuban Fund for Cinematographic Image.
2002 Recognition from the Ministry of Culture for his outstanding contribution to Cuban culture.
2002 Recognition from the Municipal Culture Department of Marianao for his transcendental artistic work.
Raúl Goméz García Distinction.
National Culture Distinction.
Founder of UNEAC.