José A. Figueroa (Havana, 1946) has spent more than four decades covering the life of his country, as a photographer. His age, social background and training make him one of the “transition” generations that, at the time of the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, was too young to have taken an active part in it, but old enough to be a conscious and analytical witness of it. His life and work deal the “inside” and “outside” of those events. This has allowed him to document, assess and symbolize many aspects of both the public and private life of the nation – two sides of the same coin – for many years; and most importantly, his work is made in Cuba from a Cuban perspective. These characteristics and circumstances are seldom found among his predecessors and contemporaries, considered individually. A Cuban Self-Portrait offers an approach, trough photography, to this piece of history.