Photographer Andrew Child captures Cuba's hidden colors

Crumbling concrete vibrates with color against a Caribbean sky, a defunct sugar mill still buzzing with the energy of the revolution.

In the next shot, tobacco seedlings glow green and rows of brown earth stretch to a pulsing, tropical hillside.

This is Cuba in full-spectrum, infrared color. And despite warming relations between the U.S. and its neighbors to the south, travelers will only see these sights through the lens of photographer Andrew Child.

"I was amazed by the setting," Child, 49, said of his first trip to Cuba. "It's the country, it's the people, it's the politics, and the economics. They've got one foot in Cold War-era socialism and they're experimenting with free markets. They're really in transition."

That cultural experiment has served as the backdrop for Child's photography during three recent art- and faith-based trips to the island.

Child's artistic experiment – full-color infrared photography – is a relatively unknown technique he discovered almost 15 years ago. He read that digital cameras were susceptible to infrared light, and some photographers were exploiting the flaw to produce black-and-white infrared shots.

"But I'm not really a black-and-white guy," Child said, sitting in his studio in Maynard. He lives in Acton. "So what I did was take two pictures: one where you filter everything but the infrared and a second where you take just a visible light shot. You add that color overlay and you get this sort of dreamlike quality."

He now shoots full-color infrared panoramas, a painstaking process that involves stitching together dozens of infrared and color images to create one continuous, full-spectrum shot. His subjects include Cuba's cities and towns, the Israeli coast, the Spanish countryside, and colonial New England.

Child's works have been exhibited at galleries, art schools and institutions throughout Greater Boston, and he is now working on a book of his Cuban photos.

To meet Child is to meet the guy next store. He refuses to wax about his work's deeper meaning, although he admits he is drawn to places that are "falling apart": An abandoned General Motors plant in upstate New York; an 18th-century schoolhouse in Stow; the graffiti-covered wall of Israel's Dolphinarium discotheque, the site of a 2001 suicide bombing that killed 21 teenagers.

"You look at that photograph and it's a nice shot of graffiti, but for me what was nice about that place was the response of the youth in Tel Aviv – it was a creative [response]," said Child.

Page 2 of 2 - The photographer is also involved with the National Autism Center, having produced a series of portraits titled, "Faces and Voices of Autism." That series is part of a permanent traveling exhibit for families on U.S. military bases.

It is an atypical career path that a younger Child might have missed, had it not been for a trip to another corner of the world: Kenya.

After abandoning dreams of law school and a career on Capitol Hill, Child graduated from American University with a degree in political science and then took off for Africa.

It was 1987, and he was teaching in a small high school in the village of Kitale, on the slopes of Mount Elgon. In a short time, he proposed to his eventual wife, Susan, and found his calling behind the camera.

"I was getting away from all the expectations – not so much that people had for me, but that I had set for myself," he said. "I realized there that I had a passion for photography."

In the 30 years since, Child has used his camera to fill a broad portfolio, including gallery exhibits and clients as diverse as Martin Guitar, Boston College, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, and Tom's of Maine.

Still, it is Cuba that seems to reinvigorate the photographer's experimental roots.

"Havana has a unique blend of Cuban hospitality, beautiful architecture, Caribbean sensuality and economic potential that just keeps pulling me back," he said. "As an American, I grew up thinking of Cuba as a forbidden land. Spending time with friends I've made during my visits has dispelled some of those mysteries and deepened others."

To see more of Child's work, go to www.andrewchild.com or visit his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/andrewchild.

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