Cuba Viñales Valley — Tobacco Farm Morning
163.00 £
A Cuban tobacco farmer working the Viñales Valley fields at dawn — the distinctive mogote (isolated limestone hill) of the Sierra de los Órganos rising behind the tobacco rows, morning mist in the valley between.
Description
The Viñales Valley in Cuba’s Pinar del Río Province is a UNESCO Cultural Landscape — the traditional cultivation of Virginia tobacco in the karst valley between the mogote formations has been maintained by Cuban farming families for generations. The mogotes — isolated limestone formations rising 100-300 metres from the valley floor — are distinctive elements of the visual language of Cuban agricultural landscape photography. This image was made at 6:30am on a working tobacco farm whose owner welcomes photographers through the Viñales paladares network, the farmer in the process of the early morning leaf inspection that precedes the day’s cultivation work. The morning mist between the mogotes creates the layered atmospheric depth of the best valley compositions. Shot on a 35mm prime at f/4, the tobacco leaf rows in sharp foreground recede to the mist-softened mogote background.
