I was looking for someone. After my first foray into illustrated interviews, I wanted more. So, my editor Solana Larsen suggested a friend, Arien Chang Castán, a photographer from Havana, Cuba. As soon as I saw his beautiful website filled with old people, seas, solitudes, cities, colours, darknesses, I wrote to him. The questions in this interview are based entirely on what I observed of his photos and what I read about him on his website. The questions, and answers, were given in an email exchange that took several weeks. I would need more time and closeness to be able to describe and tell the story of Arien Chang, but in the absence of this, below, a photographer in/from Havana. Global Voices (GV): Tell me the story of your last name. Arien Chang (AC): My grandfather came to Cuba as an illegal immigrant in 1927. He moved to Old Havana, very close to where I have lived my whole life. He started out in the business of casinos, gaming houses, bars, he even joined a political party that brought together many Chinese immigrants that, like him, had come to Cuba with the hope of new opportunities. Some had even used Cuba as a bridge to cross to the United States (a bridge that we still use…) Of course, working and living in Old Havana, he fell in love with a mulata, who ended up being my grandmother; hence the mix of races and the last name. Chang is one of the most common family names in China. I had the opportunity to verify this first hand in February, thanks to “Red Gate,” a well-known institution that offers grants to artists from all over the world. For two months I was working on my project, which involved trying to find my roots, the place where my grandfather was born and raised – not because I feel rootless or that I need to find an identity in China, but rather because of the impatience that pursues us and makes us believe that we exist, simply, because we know where we come from. As a photographer I’m always looking – in my house, in my neighbourhood, in my country – for a new image, a new concept, something that indicates why we exist, where we are going. Photography is my medium and my last name might seem exotic on this island, but that's what is magnificent and photogenic about Cuba: the races, the ages, the history of a whole people are mixed together in its streets. And what’s more, in Cuba we use two family names, the father’s and then the mother’s. My second family name is Castán, which comes from Arabic, and that’s a whole other story of roots and immigrants. GV: Photographer, why? AC: I don’t think there is a ‘why’, but I can tell you a bit about how I started, how my life, or rather, how photography changed my life or how my life became photography. It all started during the hot summer of 2003 (not as hot as it is now), in the América Theatre, a spectacular construction representative of Art Deco, in Galiano Avenue in the centre of Old Havana. They were offering a photography course, along with other unrelated courses like massage and hairdressing, but I just wanted to learn how to use a camera (in those days I didn’t even think about light). It was a very basic course, but in it I finally learned how to use the Russian camera that my father had brought from the Soviet Union, it was a Zenit that had been in a drawer in my house since I was little. I used to play with it and move its controls, it all seemed very fun, of course back then I never imagined that photography would become my life, but I already knew that I liked having a camera around and pushing the shutter. When I finished the course in the América Theatre, I discovered that I did indeed know how to work the controls but I didn’t know a thing about taking photos. Since I’m a bit stubborn and when I get my mind set on an idea I have to do it, I discovered that the best school for me was on the streets of Havana. Documentary photography is what I wanted to do, what I have done and will continue to do; I’m a photography addict and it’s too late to fix that, now all I can do is surrender myself to this addiction and feed it each day with more work. Photography exists and people can see it, but it must be discovered. GV: Cuba has been the object of countless photographers. So many that it has developed an image difficult to reinvent. How do you photograph Cuba from the inside? AC: Photographing Havana from the inside is very easy… you just have to have a Libreta de Abastecimiento (ration booklet) and permanent residence, an ID card or anything that allows you to live here for a while. The life of a Cuban is not reduced to going to work in the morning and coming home in the evening, people in this country go through an odyssey every day.