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Magic-Hour_cover_small.jpg

The Magic Hour | Lorenzo DeStefano

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The Magic Hour/La Hora Mágica: A Photographer’s Journeys Through Cuba

Publication date: 23rd July 2026

Photographer and writer Lorenzo DeStefano chronicles his seven-day cross-country journey through Cuba in a beat-up 1952 Willy’s Jeep, in the company of his friend and driver Juan de Mata Montero Reyes. In this rugged, breakdown-plagued trip, from remote villagers to urban dwellers, Santería priests to underage prostitutes, DeStefano’s text and his camera unites and informs this complex place and its resilient people.

Lorenzo’s friendship with Juan de Mata is at the centre of this book. Covering a variety of subjects including cars, women, politics and the rights of man, their road trip cements a deep,
cross-cultural friendship between two men of different generations. Expanding beyond the personal to a true panoramic of contemporary Cuban life, keeping one eye on the viewfinder and the other on the reality he is photographing, he powerfully conveys his impressions, his bewilderment, and his anxiety as an American traveling under the radar of official government permission.

Hardback (ISBN 9781914278907)

eBook (ISBN 9781914278914)

Format:

The Magic Hour/La Hora Mágica: A Photographer’s Journeys Through Cuba

Publication date: 23rd July 2026

Photographer and writer Lorenzo DeStefano chronicles his seven-day cross-country journey through Cuba in a beat-up 1952 Willy’s Jeep, in the company of his friend and driver Juan de Mata Montero Reyes. In this rugged, breakdown-plagued trip, from remote villagers to urban dwellers, Santería priests to underage prostitutes, DeStefano’s text and his camera unites and informs this complex place and its resilient people.

Lorenzo’s friendship with Juan de Mata is at the centre of this book. Covering a variety of subjects including cars, women, politics and the rights of man, their road trip cements a deep,
cross-cultural friendship between two men of different generations. Expanding beyond the personal to a true panoramic of contemporary Cuban life, keeping one eye on the viewfinder and the other on the reality he is photographing, he powerfully conveys his impressions, his bewilderment, and his anxiety as an American traveling under the radar of official government permission.

Hardback (ISBN 9781914278907)

eBook (ISBN 9781914278914)

“As a photographer I am after that fragment of time when people’s gaze meets mine, when the lens reveals life beneath the exterior. As someone born and raised in Hawai’i, almost 5,000 miles away from ‘this other island’, I felt an immediate affinity with Cubans and with their native landscape.  Moving beyond divisive ideologies and the limitations of language, my focus was the world of everyday citizens. More than thirty years ago, these journeys marked my reawakening as a photographer after having redirected my energies more to writing, theater and filmmaking, disciplines that I remain very engaged in today.” (Lorenzo DeStefano)

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