Germán Puig Paredes

Germán, Cuban photographer and pioneer of human body photography, especially of the male body.

Germán Puig was born in Sagua la Grande. At seventeen years old he enrolled in painting and sculpture at the San Alejandro Academy.

His first short film "Sarna" he made with Edmundo Desnoes in 1952, upon his return from Paris, after having founded in 1951 the Cinemateca de Cuba with the help of Henri Langlois, director and co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française with George Franju.

His encounter with Langlois (who identified with Puig since both faced similar initial problems) was decisive: Langlois agreed to send French films for the Cine-Club de La Habana, on the condition that the Cine-Club de la Habana would become the Cinemateca de Cuba, since the Cinémathèque Française could only exchange films with a similar organization. This was practically merely a formality for Puig since the bylaws of the Cine-Club de La Habana already contemplated film recovery as a true Cinemateca.

Thus, the Cine-Club de la Habana (officially established as an institution in 1948 and founded with Ricardo Vigón) transforms through the initiative of both (Puig and Langlois) in the framework of the 1951 Congress of the Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), into the Cinemateca de Cuba, a name that Alfredo Guevara would use in 1961 within the newly created Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). The legacy of both Puig and Vigón would later be denied and even silenced. Ricardo Vigón would continue collaborating with Langlois in the operation of the Cinemateca de Cuba upon Puig's return to La Habana in 1952.

Although Cuban cinema was not promoted until the creation of the ICAIC in 1959, Puig had already made several short films with a group that included Carlos Franqui, Edmundo Desnoes and Néstor Almendros. The latter was the cinematographer of one of them, titled "El Visitante" (around 1955), never completed.

Together with Carlos Franqui he made "Carta de una madre," and with Edmundo Desnoes "Sarna" (1952).

From the 1960s to the 1970s, Puig did fashion photography, portraiture, and worked in advertising as a photographer as well as an advertising filmmaker in Spain. It was in Madrid where he first began to experiment with male nudity but was arrested and accused of being a pornographer during the Franco regime. Puig did not attend his court appointment to clarify his situation, which led to a search and capture warrant issued by Spanish authorities, and he left for Paris to prove that his work was artistic.

In Paris he would be a pioneer in publishing the history of male nudity in photography, an initiative that would later be taken up by various publishing houses around the world. And he gained fame as an artist against all accusations of pornography. His photos are currently in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France as a contemporary artist. Shortly after Franco's death, he moved to Barcelona where he lived until his death.

Pioneer, both in publishing and in self-publishing the History of male photographic nudity in general, with his publishing house "Collection Nu Masculin." He published "Yang" (from his own work), "Von Gloeden et le XIX siècle," "Akademia, Le Nu academique Français," "Païdos, l'enfant nu" and "Cuir et fantasmes."

Herman Puig was the protagonist of a documentary film by David Boisseaux-Chical about his cultural exile from Cuba, as well as "Fermento" by Manuel Zayas, and also filmed interviews for television.

Rafael Acosta de Arriba has written:
The list of tributes paid to Puig's work is extensive, and including it in this note would consume too much space. I will only reflect some examples of the general recognition of his work: Miguel Losada considered that Puig with his photographs had established Camp fashion, even before Susan Sontag; Enmanuel Vincenot praised the Cuban's efforts to have photography considered an independent art; Francisco Umbral referred in one of his 1980 articles in El País to the Hamiltonian encouragement of Puig's photos; Juan Cruz recognized the masterful treatment of light in the images; Guillermo Cabrera Infante called him "the Cuban Cocteau"; Terence Moix considered him an artist of sophisticated taste, and C G Cupic affirmed that before his nudes the adjective masculine was irrelevant.

For four decades Puig's work was unknown to Cuban audiences and specialized critics. Thanks to the observation of a Valencian friend I learned of the existence of the Cuban photographer. I was in the midst of my research on body photography, while assembling a book on the subject, and suddenly I came across images created by Puig. Immediately I set out to meet him.

During a visit to Barcelona, Acosta de Arriba was able to meet the eminent photographer personally. A fortuitous fact helped. By chance, Puig had read on the Internet an article I published in 2004 in the Revista Sexología y Sociedad, which facilitated our epistolary exchange. First we exchanged emails, and then we would converse by phone whenever I visited Madrid. His voice was noticeably youthful, not that of an octogenarian, which I let him know and he was pleased. He was a great conversationalist, very Creole and gossipy, full of grace and witty remarks. Later I published an interview I did with him by mail, published in the magazine Revolución y Cultura and an essay in La Gaceta de Cuba.

At almost the same time, film critic Juan Antonio García had contacted him to narrate the twists and turns that led to the creation of the Cinemateca that, between Puig and Ricardo Vigón, they had organized in the 1950s in La Habana. As a result of these simultaneous inquiries, Puig began to be publicized in his country, late perhaps, but finally in Cuba his work and his dedication to culture and art became known.

We maintained electronic and sometimes telephone communication for a long time, until in the spring of 2013 I was able to visit Barcelona and meet him in person. This meeting became the centerpiece of that trip to the old City of Counts.

In his apartment he kept a room as a studio, since Puig took photographs of the body until the end of his days. There we conversed the whole afternoon and took some photos, then he invited me to participate as a commentator on his work in a documentary they were going to make about him and I could verify how vain that elderly man was when it came to choosing the scarf he would wear for the filming. In a beautiful park in Barcelona the documentary images were recorded and, sitting on a bench, we had a relaxed conversation that was part of the film.

I invited him to return to Cuba, from which he only had news through the media and from the few visits he received from the island. I wanted to organize an exhibition for him in some gallery, and I was able to arrange all the logistics of that trip thanks to the good offices and willingness to help culture of Eusebio Leal, but Puig was not enthusiastic about the idea of traveling by plane, despite his great desires to set foot again on his native soil, and the visit and exhibition did not materialize.

Nevertheless, in the collective exhibition I held in 2012 on body photography at the Centro Hispanoamericano de Cultura I included his images, and in the book La seducción de la mirada. Fotografías del cuerpo en Cuba (1840-2013), from 2014, a vast panorama on the subject in the history of lens images in the country, the only artist to whom I dedicated an entire chapter was him.

Really German Puig was an embellisher of the image of the human body, a lover of the aesthetic meanings of the body sign. Known in Europe and in the world, it was in his country where he was recognized latest. His life was devoted to that sublime purpose, and he created an imaginary of the human body of the highest level.

It is now up to Cuban culture to organize for him, at some point and place, the tribute he deserves, once normalcy returns to our lives.