Claudia Dijkkamp Vento

Changing Of The Guards

A bittersweet promise of a utopian future.

In 1959, Fidel Castro spearheaded the Cuban Revolution: a dream for independence, once and for all, after a long history under colonialism and imperialism. The countryside has been essential for sustaining the revolution over 50 years since: it has endured decades of geopolitical resistance, including the fall of the Soviet Union - Cuba’s most important ally during the Cold War. Yet, it seems that times are changing. In 2014, Cuba and the U.S. agreed to normalise diplomatic relations and lift the embargo on trade. And now, following news of El Comandante's passing in 2016 and his brother Raúl Castro planned resignation in 2018, all eyes are focused once again on Cuba, to witness the significance of this transition.

Changing Of The Guards is longterm project on Cuba in transition, that intends to compose a mosaic of the different aspects of Cuban society, following over half a century of the Castro-regime.

In the first stage of this project - initiated in spring 2016 - Claudia aspired to capture the pace of Cuba’s countryside, the hard work but also the harmony between man and nature.

Claudia Dijkkamp Vento

Claudia Dijkkamp Vento (1991) is a dutch-spanish photographer and documentary filmmaker. She studied journalism in Utrecht (The Netherlands), with a specialisation in foreign affairs. In Africa she worked on different stories such as forced house evictions in Accra (Ghana) and the empowerment of civil society in Cape Town (South Africa). Besides social injustice Claudia’s interest lies in the otherness and the exploration of man’s inner world and the universality of the human conditions: hope, love, loss, resentment, fear, need for exploration, the capacity of construction and destruction… Since 2014 she’s focussed on documentary storytelling and is currently participating in the international master program in documentary filmmaking DocNomads.

Claudia is currently working on the longterm photography project Changing Of The Guards that focusses on Cuba in transition. In the first stage of this project - initiated in spring 2016 - she intended to capture and preserve the pace of Cuban life in the rural area, the hard work and the harmony between man and nature.