We Still Have the Soul | Luis Casadevall and the Poetry of Havana in Monochrome
We have a special feature today that I’m excited to share with you. Luis Casadevall is a Spanish photographer who has spent more than a decade documenting everyday life in Havana through his Leica cameras. His black & white series from “We Still Have the Soul” portrays the dignity, exhaustion, and beauty of the Cuban people, a raw, human vision of Havana, far from the tourist gaze. Every image carries a story. The video below is in Spanish but you will be moved and inspired by Luis work.
You can also read more about him below.
To photograph Havana in black and white is to strip the city to its pulse. For over a decade, Luis Casadevall did just that wandering its neighborhoods, camera in hand, collecting fragments of light and shadow that speak of dignity, endurance, and the quiet poetry of survival.
Credit: Luis Casadevall
Casadevall is best known as one of Spain’s most influential figures in advertising a creative mind who helped shape the visual language of a generation. But beyond the world of campaigns and Cannes Lions, another Casadevall emerged: a patient observer of humanity, drawn not by clients but by curiosity.
His project, We Still Have the Soul, is the result of twelve years of photographic listening. From an archive of more than 65,000 black-and-white images, Casadevall and curator Chema Conesa distilled a visual narrative that feels both personal and universal.
Credit: Luis Casadevall
This is not the Havana of postcards or nostalgia. It is a Havana seen from within the everyday grace of people who live amid decay and beauty, humor and hardship. Each frame holds a whisper of the island’s spirit.
Casadevall’s approach is both documentary and lyrical. He works without sentimentality, yet every image carries empathy. Children playing on cracked pavement. An old man leaning into the light. Walls that remember revolutions, and faces that have seen too many of them.
Luis’ new book We Still Have the Soul is more than a book it’s a meditation on time, resilience, and the enduring humanity of a place. It reminds us that black and white photography is not just a choice of tone, but a way of thinking. To see in monochrome is to look past distraction, to find form, gesture, and truth.
As Casadevall once did in advertising, he now does with light: distilling the world to its essence. In doing so, he offers us not only images of Havana, but reflections of ourselves proof that even amid ruin, the soul remains.
You can view more of Luis Casadevalls amazing work at www.luiscasadevallphoto.com
