Newsweek

Cuba’s Me Generation

Greg Kahn’s photographs capture Cuba’s millennials embracing their individuality—and reshaping their country
Anna Marie Mesa, 16, listens to music on her smartphone in Centro Havana. Technology is leapfrogging the infastructure in Cuba where citizens went from landlines to smartphones in a matter of months.
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Tourists are lured to Havana by the ruin porn: the capital’s decaying, pastel colonial architecture, its 1950s-era cars and the fading faces of its founding revolutionaries, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. But when photographer Greg Kahn was on assignment in the city in 2012, he stumbled on a scene that gave him a glimpse of a different Cuba: a plaza full of young Cubans partying as a DJ played contemporary electronic dance music.

“They told me they hate this attitude of ‘I want to go down there and see the crumbling buildings,’” Kahn said. “‘We live here. We want these buildings to be fixed. We're a generation that wants to turn this around. We want to stay here. We love Cuba. We love being Cuban. And we want that to be depicted as well.’”

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