This series of portraits stands out because of the remarkable strength and dignity of this Afro-Cuban woman, whom I met during a day trip to Santiago de Las Vegas, near Havana. I initially asked her to sit for the photos you see here, but by the end, we had hit it off, and she asked me to take a portrait of her with her grandson. Sadly, I was never able to send her the print, which I usually did for others by mail or through neighbors visiting Cuba on future trips. In the late ’90s, a Haitian-American painter saw one of the photos I exhibited of this woman and asked if she could use it to create a portrait painting based on this series.