Dove & the law
From the Introduction to La paloma y la ley
Before I met Marta, I met her hand, hanging out the window of a car and holding a cigarette. I approached the dark-green buggy and took a picture. The curves of her fingers extended into acrylic nails, all bronze-colored half-moons punctuated by one glittered nail on the ring finger.
The cigarette burned between her index and middle fingers, which no longer extended all the way—an injury from a fight with her man, some twelve years ago.
I’d been photographing her friend Mita for a story about mulas, the people who bring cheap clothes to Cuba in suitcases and sell them on the black market.
That day, Mita and Marta were picking me up from the Capri police station in Arroyo Naranjo, in the outskirts of Havana. I’d been detained briefly after photographing a police officer without my press credentials on me.
After they scooped me up, we went to buy beers.
Text by Lisette Poole