If you spend enough time talking with people in Cuba, there is a phrase you are sure to hear: No es fácil — it’s not easy. Those three words attest to a hard-earned wisdom, of learning how to survive challenges big and small, ideological and practical, without getting caught in the middle or, worse, on the wrong side.

No es fácil is also a good rejoinder to tourists who cling to a facile — if clichéd — view of Cuba as a land of old cars, sleek cigars and pristine beaches. Not that those things are not there, but the island has many more stories to be told beyond that limited visual vocabulary. It’s not easy to see beyond preconceived notions, but an ambitious new exhibit from the International Center of Photography aims to introduce a foreign audience to how photography in Cuba has changed over the years. “¡Cuba, Cuba!” — which opens next week at the Southampton Arts Center on Long Island — features works by Cuban and American photographers spanning 65 years and underscoring how the medium has reflected Cuban life, art and politics.

“Cuba is perceived as a place of nostalgia in the American imagination,” said Iliana Cepero, a Cuban-born art historian who curated the show with I.C.P.’s Pauline Vermare. “It’s the place where their grandparents honeymooned, this incredible site of longing and joy, music and leisure time. We do not want that image anymore. What this show is trying to do is to make clear for the American audience that Cuba is much more complex. Life is messy. Life is complicated. Behind those beautiful scenes everyone is attracted to there is a complex canvas waiting for them.”

The show comes at an apt time, as the restoration of diplomatic relations between the countries has resulted in increased travel to the island by Americans long curious about a place that had been off-limits to most. Last year’s announcement of the thaw in relations sparked the idea for the exhibit, said Ms. Cepero, who teaches at New York University. Although they did not have enough time to go to Cuba to see what work they could obtain, the curators relied on the International Center of Photography’s own collection as well as those of Lehigh University Art Galleries, the Center for Cuban Studies in New York and the private collection of Vicki Gold Levi.

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The decades spanned by the show reflect not just changes in life, but also changes in photographic styles and intent. Starting with scenes of 1950s Havana night life — including a conga-playing Marlon Brando next to the writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante — it segues into historic images from the revolution, with works by Alberto Korda and Raul Corrales, as well as Americans like Elliott Erwitt and Burt Glinn. Ms. Cepero was particularly taken with Glinn’s images, which she noted showed the chaos on the streets rather than the heroic scenes portrayed by others at the time.

Those early images also showed the revolution’s leaders up close, although soon afterward access would become limited. That, she said, reflected how the government both used and controlled photography.

“Fidel Castro was media-savvy and knew the power of images,” Ms. Cepero said. “Photography reflects political and social changes going on in Cuba, and it is a very controlled medium because of its nature, this alleged ‘truth’ of photography. Because of those connotations, the government has always been very interested and concerned about what photographers are doing.”

In turn, Cuban photographers learned to adapt: The country’s emphasis on increased sugar production was reflected in images that focused on labor. In the 1980s, the crisis of the Mariel boatlift led Cuban photographers to explore facets of daily life.

“They discovered the streets,” Ms. Cepero said. “They were not working in sugar cane fields or factories. They discovered daily life that had been so neglected in the past.”

A bigger change came in the 1990s, when the extreme hardship that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union — Cuba’s patron — prompted an unexpected rebirth among photographers as they dealt with issues that had previously been taboo.

“Migration, racism, queer culture and Afro-Cuban religion are the main four themes that photographers approached,” Ms. Cepero said. “They also began this kind of performative activity before the camera. Instead of going to the streets, many of these trained artists and photographers began to use their bodies as their weapon of criticism, since the outside world was so messy and complicated and hopeless.”

The decade also saw a rise in the number of female photographers. Artists like Cirenaica Moreira, trained as an actress, used the camera as a tool for self-expression, rather than as a medium to document the outside world. Their work became more conceptual, too, and was influenced by Americans like Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman, Ms. Cepero said.

Among the pioneers in the field was Maria Eugenia Haya, better known as Marucha. She had played an important role in the founding of the Fototeca de Cuba and was a formidable artist in her own right. During the 1970s, when others were chronicling sweaty laborers, she was going to an old industrial space in a marginal neighborhood, where old Afro-Cuban musicians gathered to play the old songs, dressed as they used to in the 1940s.

“While the male photographers were doing these heroic photographs of men in the fields, she was taking pictures of black musicians,” Ms. Cepero said. “This was something odd and extraordinary at the time.”

The dilapidated buildings seen in images like those are, for the Cuban photographers, a backdrop and not necessarily the object of their attention, as they have been for many foreigners who go to the island. The other difference between the Cubans and the Americans is one born of necessity. With materials scarce, local photographers used black-and-white, unlike the lush color employed by Americans like Alex Webb, for example. The fact is, Ms. Cepero said, it is not easy to be a Cuban photographer. One has to struggle, whether that is for materials or just the emotional and physical space in which to work.

“What I hope this show is going to convey is how photography fought and won its battles for self-expression, artistic emancipation and thematic freedom,” she said. “Cuban photographers, and this includes women, everybody has fought for something, very strongly and in difficult conditions. Women fought for having a space in this male-controlled field, Cuban photographers in general have fought for self-expression in a society ridden with censorship and prohibitions.”

Those struggles, she said, are far removed from the picturesque scenes foreigners look for when they travel to Cuba, in search of a moment that has long gone. The last thing Ms. Cepero wants to hear, in fact, is how some Americans want to capture scenes of Havana “before Cuba changes,” a sentiment that she cannot stand.

“Our cities may be picturesque, but our lives are not,” she said. “When they say ‘before it changes,’ it conveys this sense before the picturesque changes and we have the American landscape everywhere. It is not that simple. Many people in Cuba would love to have McDonald’s or Subway. What do they expect to see?”

Cuba to her, is neither a lab nor something preserved in amber.

“For the left, it’s a socialist paradise,” she said. “For those who don’t agree with that, it’s like they hope it returns to the 1950s. Cuba for a long time has been neither of those things. But when you tell them that, it shatters their dream. Maybe images can be more explicit about that. Maybe this show will break through those ideas.”

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