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The Havana Series
The Havana project began as a class project during Acosta’s senior year at Florida A&M University.
The assignment was to produce a photo-documentary on a small town within the northern Florida and southern Georgia regions. The selected town could not have a Wal-Mart, but should have a post office. He chose Havana, a small
rural Florida town with a population of about 1700.
At first, he focused his lens on the town’s booming downtown antique district, chronicling the ways in which the town was unique without the influence of
Wal-Mart. But as he spent more time in the public housing section and rural areas of the town, a different picture emerged. The racial and financial divide was acutely evident and the Black residents’ unflagging hope of a
Wal-Mart coming to their town was revelatory: to them Wal-Mart meant jobs and resources that would improve the quality of their lives.
Acosta decided to put aside his own personal bias and instead to document the
residents’ dreams and aspiration for a Wal-Mart opening in their town.
The Havana project soon became much more than a class project. He spent countless hours going back to Havana, shooting and interviewing the
residents, developing his 35-mm and medium format films, taking images from his previous ‘shoot’ back to share with and give to his subjects. This continued long after the class project had ended.
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