March 24, 2002
Arts in Espanol-The Sunday Star-Ledger
April 21, 2002
BY: Arturo Martinez
Photographer Maria Lau, born five months after her parents arrived in Jersey City from Cuba, grew up wanting to document "a lifestyle that I could not be a part of as a child, but often dreamt of."
Lau's images of the island in black and white, infrared, and color are appearing at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck. Her journeys to Cuba-four in the last five years-are for her a "voyeuristic relationship between the Cuban people, their environment and myself."
"This Cuban series is a long-term documentary project," she says of her plans to return this summer. "As a Cuban-American with relatives there, I'm allowed to visit 21 days a year."
Lau is among 10 photographers in the Puffin exhibit, which is made up of street images from around the world, from China to Morocco to the U.S. Show curator Marko Jokic said Lau's images "draw insight from common street scenes. Her photographs convey an intimacy with the people and place that express a search into her own roots. At the same time, she is a visitor there, so she has an outsider's view."
One of Lau’s most discussed and most exhibited works, “Santera,” appears in the show. The image shows a female practitioner of Santeria, the Roman Catholic-African spiritual practice, in her Sunday best smoking a cigar (as the god of lightening and fire, Shango, does) as if in a religious trance.
Lau's photographs are also part of an exhibition of New Jersey Latino artists assembled by Rutgers University that has just left Manhattan and is expected to be seen in New Jersey spaces later this year.
March 24, 2002
Arts in Espanol-The Sunday Star-Ledger
April 21, 2002
BY: Arturo Martinez
Photographer Maria Lau, born five months after her parents arrived in Jersey City from Cuba, grew up wanting to document "a lifestyle that I could not be a part of as a child, but often dreamt of."
Lau's images of the island in black and white, infrared, and color are appearing at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck. Her journeys to Cuba-four in the last five years-are for her a "voyeuristic relationship between the Cuban people, their environment and myself."
"This Cuban series is a long-term documentary project," she says of her plans to return this summer. "As a Cuban-American with relatives there, I'm allowed to visit 21 days a year."
Lau is among 10 photographers in the Puffin exhibit, which is made up of street images from around the world, from China to Morocco to the U.S. Show curator Marko Jokic said Lau's images "draw insight from common street scenes. Her photographs convey an intimacy with the people and place that express a search into her own roots. At the same time, she is a visitor there, so she has an outsider's view."
One of Lau’s most discussed and most exhibited works, “Santera,” appears in the show. The image shows a female practitioner of Santeria, the Roman Catholic-African spiritual practice, in her Sunday best smoking a cigar (as the god of lightening and fire, Shango, does) as if in a religious trance.
Lau's photographs are also part of an exhibition of New Jersey Latino artists assembled by Rutgers University that has just left Manhattan and is expected to be seen in New Jersey spaces later this year.