IN THE WORKS! 'SENSUAL HAVANA: A CELEBRATION OF FEMALE BEAUTY'
AN EXCITING FINE ART COFFEE-TABLE BOOK BY CHRISTOPHER P. BAKER
"Sensual Havana looks amazing. Beautifully and elegantly photographed."
MICHAEL CHINICCI, author/photographer of Vanishing Cuba
"Chris’s skill as a photographer has resulted in a body of work—and what a body!—that could so easily have been tawdry titillation but instead captures the sensuality of Cuban women with good taste and sensitivity. His use of light provides a masterclass in composition and location photography. The result is a magnificent tribute to the women of Cuba.”
ROBERT HOLMES, five times ‘Travel Photographer of the Year’ and author/photographer of Passages: Fifty Years of Stories, Journeys & Images
Time-worn Havana is as fantastic a backdrop for glamour and artistic nude photography as exists in this world, given its mixture of Spanish colonial and faded baroque, art deco, and modernist architecture, its wealth of 1950s American cars, and its stimulating aura of exoticism. To which add Cuba’s stunningly beautiful and self-assured women, and their joyous at-ease delight in being photographed.
In 2015 Annie Leibovitz famously photographed Rhianna nude in Havana for Vanity Fair, following a long tradition of photographers--from Imogen Cunningham, Helmut Newton, and Bettina Rheims--who have celebrated the naked human form since the first cameras were made. Cuban arts professor Rafael Acosta de Arriba’s beautiful coffee-table book, La Seducción de la Mirada: Fotografía del Cuerpo en Cuba (1840-2013), celebrates more than a century of nude photography by Cuban photographers, male and female alike. Cuba today has an avant-garde (and overtly erotic) art scene, as its own photographers have pushed the boundaries, experimenting more confidently with nude photography. The Instituto Superior de Arte (Cuba's foremost arts school) even offers nude photography courses.
Now, award-winning travel writer and photographer Christopher P. Baker—acclaimed by National Geographic as “One of the world’s foremost authorities on Cuba travel and culture”—uses his passion for Cuba to evoke the sensuality of Havana and its cubanas. The more than 50 models represented in this book span the gamut from professional models to actresses, classical musicians, ballerinas of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, and even medical doctors.
A tribute to the female form, Christopher’ respectful and elegant treatment of the subject pays homage to all that is positive about the Cuban Revolution's advancement of women’s rights and self-determination, while also honoring their own unashamedly and affirmatively self-confident pride in expressing their sensuality. As professional pianist Ingrid de la Caridad Zamora wrote after posing nude beside a grand piano: "Thank you, Chris. It was a very beautiful experience!"... a sentiment echoed by 51-year-old Leydiana Valdéz Lopez, who achieved a life-dream of being photographed nude: "What a beautiful experience! I enjoyed every minute." Ingrid's and Leydiana's first-ever formal shoots as models showed that nude photography can be artistic without being erotic, and erotic without being pornographic.
Nonetheless, Sensual Havana was never conceived as a work of erotica. As Christopher writes in the Preface: "I viewed it from the ancient Greek perspective, placing the human body on a pedestal, to be appreciated with reverence as a work of art and majestic beauty… and, yes, for its sensuality. So, this book is for anyone who appreciates the human body as art. And, critically, as a travel photographer, I wanted to portray the female models in Havana’s sensual urban context—its uniquely evocative caught-in-a-time-warp settings that Hollywood would be hard-pressed to equal."
Combining glamour, boudoir, and figurative fine-art nudes, the book is intended, above all, to be an unapologetic source of aesthetic joy—a panegyric to female beauty—and an expression of esteem for the free-spirited Cuban females' self-confident pride in expressing their sensuality without shame. Ranging in age from 18 to 51, the women in these pages proudly wear their own skins (if little else); they accept and respect themselves as sensuous beings. Hopefully, my images will convey that feeling to others.
THE REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BOOK SHOWN ARE CONCEPTUALIZATIONS BY THE AUTHOR. IMAGES SHOWN ARE LOW-RES (INCLUDING SOME SHOWING COPYRIGHT SIGNATURES) FOR PLACEMENT ONLY AND DO NOT REFLECT THE QUALITY OF THE BOOK WHEN PUBLISHED.
NO PART OF THIS WEBPAGE MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORMAT WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
THIS LIMITED-EDITION HARD-COVER COFFEE-TABLE BOOK IS EXPECTED TO BE PUBLISHED IN SUMMER 2025
PRE-ORDER TODAY & HELP MAKE SENSUAL HAVANA BECOME A REALITY
“Christopher Baker is a legend and has always looked squarely at Cuba—at what catches his interest, his heart, and his eye. In this seductive coffee-table book he has one eye on Havana past, described with tinges of longing, while also showing us sensual Havana right here and now—shabby, yet still sublime—through its alluring, self-possessed women.”
NANCY STOUT, author of Havana: La Habana and One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution
“Yes, the models in this luscious book are stunning, but I was immediately drawn to the color-dripping photography. Christopher Baker melded sensual beauty in intriguing environments with grace and respect. It is photographic alchemy. Of course, Havana is magical.”
NEVADA WIER, multi award-winning travel photographer for National Geographic, Smithsonian, etc.
