“Chuck Close perhaps rightly said that photography is the only art form in which there are accidental masterpieces. A good photographic monograph is something else, perhaps more a product of serendipity. I like to plan things and appreciate well-planned conceptual photography projects, but that has never been me. I work best when free and on the road, following my nose. Usually when I let go of the organized mind and think with the gut and the heart, it leads to more interesting work.

I’d been in Cuba doing just that for a couple of years, following a group of youth into electronica music and L-Dopa, a Parkinson’s drug. I didn’t know why I was attracted to them, but they gave me an understanding of the country that was necessary to making “Yo Soy Fidel.” By the time Fidel died, I already had a feeling for the people, an understanding on their history and an idea of how the place worked. Without this knowledge, the care to see these pictures would not have been possible. And I would not have been so bold, so confident in the process and so interested in the faces beyond the various Cuba-isms.

As this book is ultimately not about Fidel but about Cubans, another title for it could have been “Soy Cuba,” after the Kalatozov film. It was the Cubans who stood beside the road in the dress they chose to wear, with the posture they chose to adopt, in the place they chose to stand, watching the man who made so many decisions for them pass for the last time. It was the Cubans, not Fidel, who in the end were left standing, to now decide the fate of their country.”