Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte

Art Photographer and author, Alexis Rodriguez-Duarte was born in Havana, Cuba. He left the island on the Freedom Flights in 1968 with his family & settled in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. His grandfather gave him his first camera at the age of ten & that sparked his love for photography. His professional career began in 1985 in Miami and in 1988 he moved to London, where he met Cuban music legend, Celia Cruz. He photographed her for 12 years & published a book titled, Presenting Celia Cruz in 2004. After London, Rodriguez-Duarte moved to New York’s Greenwich Village, where he’s lived with his husband and collaborator, Tico Torres for 25 years.
His camera has taken him to many parts of the world & given him the opportunity to work for publications such as Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle China, Harper’s Bazaar Art China, The New Yorker, Town & Country, The New York Times, L’Uomo Vogue & the British, Spanish & German editions of Vogue Magazine, among others. It’s also allowed him to photograph some of the world’s leading artists, celebrities and public figures such as Andy Garcia, Madonna, Gloria Estefan, Gianni Versace, Carolina Herrera, Pedro Almodovar, Rossy de Palma, Chita Rivera, Jeff Koons, Christo, Ronald Lauder...

Self taught

September 8, 2017 - March 4, 2018 Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. Exhibition title: CUBA IS


Presenting Celia Cruz at The Cuban Museum
In Miami through Oct 30


PRESENTING
CELIA CRUZ

Photographs by/Fotografías por

ALEXIS RODRIGUEZ–DUARTE

IN COLLABORATION WITH / EN COLABORACIÓN CON

TICO TORRES
https://www.alexisrodriguez-duarte.com
Introduction

Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, my husband and collaborator, Tico Torres and I were starving artists living and working in London. It was 1988. One gloomy November day, after an uneventful interview at British Vogue, we rode the endless escalator exiting the underground at the Tottenham Court Road station. On our way up we were taken aback by a huge poster announcing Celia Cruz in Concert at Hammersmith Palaís! Homesick as we were, we decided to track Celia down so we could meet her.

After a few hours of detective work and countless calls to area hotels, we finally located her! We boldly asked for Celia Cruz, not knowing that she was checked in as Celia Knight. Miraculously we were connected directly to her room. A gentleman, who we later realized was Pedro Knight answered the phone. We told him that we were two Cuban-American boys fr...