1. Susan Bank is a photographer who is located in both Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Being mostly self taught, with the exception of a few classes over a span of 3 years with a few masters of the photography world; she decided that she wanted to do more than the snapshot life, so she started to invest more of her time and effort in to her photos. Over a time span of 10 years back and forth to Cuba she worked hard day and night to capture images that reflected the daily life of the Cuban culture.
2. Bank's goal with Piercing the Darkness was to show powerful images of an unfamiliar culture. Being that Cuba is an embargoed country, and has been for some fifty plus years, there is a lot that is unknown about the culture or the people of Cuba in general. Bank wanted to deliver to the people her views and what she saw in the culture. Spending time illegally in Tobacco farmers homes (where there was no technology) is how she was able to take a lot of the pictures in the start and towards the end of the series she started to stay in private owned homes in the city. Banks is also very fond of her Leica M6.
3. The feeling I get when I look at these photographs is a feeling of empathy? When you look at Bank's photographs you can feel all of the emotion in the photos. Bank makes use of the Black and White photography so the colors would not be of distraction so you can focus on the raw emotion of the photos. With that being said, she does a great job of displaying the strong emotions to the viewers.
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