In the photos, models with martini glasses laugh in the back of an open convertible, women play mini-golf at the yacht club where Hemingway used to fish, the Castro boys smoke cigars. The glossy black and white images document Cuba's most privileged -- artists, musicians, models, and filmmakers -- portraying lives of splendor in one of the poorest countries in the world. This was Dweck's eighth visit to Cuba, this time for the opening of his show, Habana Libre, for which his shots of Havana's elite were displayed at the Fototeca de Cuba Museum. Dweck is the first American photographer to have a solo exhibit in Cuba since the embargo began 52 years ago. "I've had the chance," he said, "to see what most Americans, most Cubans for that matter, will never get a chance to see."

He didn't just mean his intimacy with the communist leader's family, although that's been a part of it. Dweck has talked with Alex about visiting Dweck's house in Montauk, and Fidel is said to display, hanging over his bed, a portrait of a nude woman from one of Dweck's previous projects. In Cuba, taking pictures of the ruling family or reporting on their personal lives is prohibited; in the Press Freedom Index, Cuba ranked 167 out of 178. This is a place where social capital can be a stronger currency than the peso, and you have to know the right people to see this side of society.

As Dweck says, he "was lucky to get lucky." He stumbled into his entrée after a chance meeting his very first week in Cuba in 2009, when a well-connected British expatriate invited Dweck to a lavish evening affair. "I wandered into the party," Dweck said, "and by the time it ended at 3 a.m., I knew I had stumbled into this hidden world." Dweck wound up renting an apartment in Havana, a 13th floor hideaway with wrap-around terraces in the last modern building built in Cuba, a stacked tower finished in 1960. Camilo, Che Guevera's son, lived several floors down. Dweck made friends quickly (who doesn't like being told they're interesting and beautiful?) and threw two dinner parties, where he continued to meet Havana's well-heeled crowd. Before long, it was as if he was one of them.

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Havana's reigning social scene is remarkably welcoming, even to an American. This city is perhaps one of the last places where upper-crust bacchanalia of this sort are open to whoever shows up; although Cubans are some of the warmest people in the world, the hospitality here is mostly because you don't hear about these parties unless you're the kind of person who would already be invited.

My first time in Cuba, I was not that type of person, and neither were the Cubans I met. I arrived in Havana on an old Russian Yakovlev, a plane with springs sticking through the seats and duct-tape holding up the paneling, and stayed at first in a concrete, barracks-like building with a family whose 14 year-old son had vacated the room so his parents could collect rent on it. The father, who holds an engineering graduate degree from Russia, makes $20 dollars a month and is saving up in hopes of one day sending his son away.