Herman Puig

Herman Puig was a Cuban photographer born in 1928 who died in 2021 in Barcelona. He was also the founder of the Cuban Film Archive, a film director and a renowned nude photographer.

Herman studied painting and sculpture in Cuba, where he made his first short film, Sarna (1952). At the age of 20, he moved to Paris to study audiovisual techniques. In 1950, he began working with Henri Langlois, director and co-founder of the Cinémathèque Française. This association led him to found the Cuban Film Archive with Ricargo Vigón, which was officially recognised as an institution in 1948 and re-established under the same name in 1961 on the initiative of Alfredo Guevara and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry.

In 1955, Puig directed the film El Visitante, which was never completed and featured Néstor Almendros as director of photography. With Carlos Franqui, Puig shot Carta de una madre.

In the 1960s, Puig worked as a photographer and advertising filmmaker in Spain. In Madrid, under Franco's dictatorship, Puig began experimenting with male nude photography, but was arrested for an alleged drug offence and charged with pornography. To avoid imprisonment, Puig moved to Paris where, through his art, he gained universal acclaim as an artist, despite the charges of pornography. Shortly after Franco's death, he settled in Barcelona.

At the age of 80, Herman Puig continues to photograph nudes (both male and female) and is the subject of David Boisseaux-Chical's documentary film about his cultural exile from Cuba.