Forbidden City

Gallery Exposure opens with photos of Havana by owner-printer Mark Sonners

It was just one week, 16 years ago, but it made a lasting impression. That was when Mark Sonners went to Havana. Today, as he prepares to open Gallery Exposure in Old Torrance, the best images from that long-ago trip will be on view in “Cuba 99,” subtitled “A Photographic Retrospective from La Habana, Cuba.”

“I’m not really a photographer per se,” Sonners says, “I’m a printer. But I’ve had this collection that I’ve always wanted to do something with, and I figured it would be a good showcase because the facility, in addition to being a gallery space, is also a print production facility.”

Gallery Exposure is just a couple blocks from Ron Libbrecht’s APC Fine Arts and Graphics, the latter also displaying art while at the same time making ends meet as a highly respected print shop.

There is a difference here, as Sonners points out. Libbrecht is also a painter, and the artists he exhibits tend to work in oil, watercolor, or pen and ink. On the other hand, Sonners says, “My background’s been printing for photographers, so that’s what I’m comfortable with. This is really going to be a photographic gallery.”

The two businesses should complement one another nicely, in my opinion, and give a little boost to the ongoing revitalization of downtown Torrance. Also, Destination: Art is close by.

“Once the show is launched,” Sonners says, referring to “Cuba 99,” “the gallery will be open six days a week. I’m going to encourage people to just wander in, and whatever show is on display will showcase what the print facility can produce.”

 

Channeling Walker Evans

“I was invited by a group of sports photojournalists who were assigned to do a story on Cuban youth sports,” Sonners says. “One of the entourage was a photographer I had been printing for for a long time, and he kept urging me to tag along with them. So I finally did, with really no official capacity. I was there for a week, and while they were off on their assignment I wandered the streets and everywhere I looked was something I thought would be memorable to capture.”

Gallery Exposure is not large, but the display walls turn this way and that, and in the end there’s room for 50 good-sized photographs, the first section in black and white and the second half in color. Sonners printed them all. Of the 50 images, three are by other artists. One of these depicts the comandante himself, Fidel Castro, taken in the late 1980s.

Another shot, from 1957, shows a bit of the Malecón (the famous waterfront promenade and seawall), and Sonners’ aunt is in the photo. “She worked for Max Factor and was one of the lead makeup artists,” he says. “They would send her to the big fancy department stores and she would do demonstrations and training sessions. She went there [to Havana, in the ‘50s] quite a bit.”

The third non-Sonners image in “Cuba 99” is a reproduction of an original print by Walker Evans. Sonners included it in the show because the scene it depicts, a large hotel near the Capitol building, was also photographed by Sonners during his own visit.

Between the picture taken by Evans and the picture taken by Sonners there’s a gap of 66 years, which is what Sonners wants to emphasize. “This is what I found throughout,” he says. “There is virtually no change, other than the cars. Now, there are a lot of old cars in Havana, but not this old.

“When I went to Cuba,” Sonners continues, “I kind of had a preconceived idea of what I was looking for. I’ve been a big fan of Walker Evans for many years. In 1933 he went there [to Havana] for two weeks on assignment, and he had never been there before. He took an amazing set of photographs.”

This came about after journalist Carleton Beals traveled to Havana in the fall of 1932 so that he could write about the oppressive regime of Cuban president Gerardo Machado. Evans, who went to the island the following spring, was hired to take photographs to be included in the book Beals had written, “The Crime of Cuba.”

“I had been looking at that book for quite a while,” Sonners says, “and when I went to Havana it was like I was reliving the book. Evans was only contracted to go for two weeks — and he ended at the Floridita, which is the most famous bar. This is where Hemingway used to hang out, and they ran into each other as soon as he got to the island. And they became fast drinking buddies.

“Every evening [Evans] would go back to the bar and report back to Hemingway where his journey took him. His commission ran out, and he didn’t want to leave; and Hemingway sponsored him for the rest of the couple weeks that he stayed. He never went back. In fact, he never did an assignment outside of the U.S. again.”

Sonners hasn’t gone back either, in case you’re wondering.

 

What goes around

Mark Sonners lives just up from Floyd’s barber shop near 8th Place and Pacific Coast Highway in Hermosa Beach.

“I used to work out of my garage, but that got old,” he says. “When I came across this space being available I thought it was time to make the leap.”

For quite a few years Sonners had his own place in the Valley and he did work for Hollywood printers who were servicing unit photographers on motion pictures. “Later, in the early 2000s, I had my own facility near Sony Studios, and I did a lot of work for them.” His focus on printing for fine art photographers has yielded beautiful results, such as “Tango Amor,” by Gayle Goodrich.

The images in “Cuba 99” represent about one-half of those that will be in the book that accompanies the show. It will be in both color and black and white, “with a narrative of my experiences doing this and being there.” Sonners intends to have copies he can sign at the opening.

The last photo the two of us look at is of Raúl Corrales, whose iconic portrait of movie star-handsome Che Guevara adorns posters and T-shirts worldwide. Corrales lived in Cojímar, just outside of Havana. “In the early ‘50s,” Sonners says, “Hemingway took a house next door to him.” They became friends and drinking buddies, and went out on Hemingway’s fishing boat. Another neighbor, the ragged Anselmo Hernández, as scrawny as Hemingway was beefy, is cited as being the model or inspiration for “The Old Man and the Sea.”

One of Corrales’s influences, and this is bringing us full circle, was Walker Evans. Corrales met with and hosted Sonners and his companions.

“He made us a fabulous marlin dinner,” Sonners recalls, “and in return we brought him rolls of film, which at the time he wasn’t able to get very easily.”

Sonners’ photo of this venerable artist, who passed away in 2006, is a fitting conclusion to an impressive series from a memorable trip made years ago.

“Cuba 99: A Photographic Retrospective from La Habana, Cuba,” by Mark Sonners, opens with a reception from 5 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12, at Gallery Exposure, 1439 Marcelina Ave., Torrance. Through Oct. 17. Call (310) 770-6402 or email msonners@industryartworks.com.

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