Photo © Manuel Almenares | Jíbaro Photos

Manuel Almenares

Member
born: Cuba
based: Cuba
@manuelalmenares_visual

Biography

Manuel Almenares Estrada was born in Havana in 1992. Between 2007 and 2010 he studied high school at the Vladimir Ilich Lenin Vocational Pre-University Institute of Exact Sciences. After finishing his military service, he worked as a messenger at the Sacred Greek Orthodox Cathedral of San Nicolás de Mira in Havana, where he had his first contacts with photography by working as a photojournalist for religious activities.

Between 2016 and 2019, Manuel was the photographer for Opus Habana Magazine of the Office of the City Historian. It was during this period that he gained working experience as a photojournalist and decided to channel his personal work towards documentary photography with a marked humanist bias.

Manuel is interested in the presence of the human being within its cultural sphere and social environment. Most of his work is developed specifically in neighborhoods of Old Havana and Centro Habana, Cuba. These places, for him, represent the socio-cultural diversity on the island, since he finds within its inhabitants, the profile of today's Cuban — so complex and heterogeneous. Several obsessions identify his young work: urban and everyday scenes, the intimacy of people, their rituals, and customs. That is the experiences of humans and their way of being in the world, and in Cuba.  

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