Miami Herald photographer Pedro Portal nominated for the Beca Cintas
Miami Herald photographer Pedro Portal has been nominated to the prestigious Beca Cintas 2025 for his project “Rostros de la isla dispersa.” Beca Cintas is one of the most important recognitions for Cuban artists living around the world. The winners will be announced this Jan. 22 at a ceremony at the Knight Center for Music Innovation of the Universidad de Miami in Coral Gables.
The Beca Cintas is funded by an endowment from businessman and arts patron Oscar B. Cintas (1887–1957), who also served as Cuba’s ambassador to the United States from 1932 to 1934.
This year the fellowship awards $25,000 to winners in Architecture and Design, Creative Writing, Musical Composition, Visual Arts, and Photography, in which Portal is joined as a nominee by Yaritza Guirado Alejo, Ania Moussawel, Luis Quintanal, Lissette Schaeffler and Ricardo Zulueta.
"It is probably the most consistent project since exile to recognize and preserve Cuban art, mainly for artists in exile who have no country nor the support of institutions like a Ministry of Culture," Portal says.
Included among the 250 portraits Portal made for “Rostros de la isla dispersa” are several Beca Cintas winners, such as writer Lorenzo García Vega, playwright María Irene Fornés and painters Carmen Herrera, Arturo Rodríguez, Rafael Soriano—honored with the Career Achievement Award in 2014—and a 2025 nominee, painter Gustavo Acosta.
Soriano, photographed in his small southwest Miami home, was featured with the saw that his wife Milagros used from their early exile days to cut wood and materials for stretcher frames and mounts because they couldn’t afford them.
Portal took the photo of Antonio José Ponte on his first visit to exile, at the time of the release of the book “Las comidas profundas.”
Portraits of poet Ángel Cuadra, who spent 15 years as a political prisoner in Castro’s jails, show him behind the railing of his Miami home where his typewriter was visible—a tribute to the writer who continued making poetry in captivity.
Portal says he chose to shoot in black and white as a tribute to a medium that was beginning to change. Much of the project was done using analog photography before moving to digital.
"The idea was never to photograph famous people, but people in my circle, those I happen to meet," Portal says.
This story was originally published January 16, 2026 at 2:59 PM.
