The Cubans: People of a paused land
Apalachicola’s Richard Bickel, an Emmy Award-winning photojournalist, recently returned from Cuba with a wealth of new works.
The trip was his 14th trip to the island. “The economic crisis was as bad as I have seen,” he said. “The country was out of gasoline, and there were nightly power blackouts. To get around, I had to find someone with black market connections for fuel and ended up in a 1948 Dodge limousine.”
Most of Bickel’s images were made in remote Vinales, the heart of Cuba’s tobacco farming. “It is a page lifted from Steinbeck,” Bickel said. “There is no mechanized farming; work is by horse and plow and hard hand labor.”
Bickel’s Cuba work may be seen in his Apalachicola gallery at 81 Market St., and on his website at www.richardbickelphotography.com.
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.