Quinceañera: Coming of age through digital photography in Cuba

Abstract

Taking a series of portrait photographs to mark a girl’s fifteenth birthday is a common and highly celebrated practice in Cuba. The fifteenth birthday is considered in Cuba to be the marking point at which girls become women, and producing an album of printed photographs in which the fifteen-year-old, or quinceañera, wears special clothes, hairstyles, and makeup, constitutes the center of Cuban coming of age rituals. Girls’ fifteenth birthday celebrations (commonly referred to as quinces) are widely celebrated in Latin America, especially in Mexico, Central America, the Hispanic Caribbean, and among Latino populations of the United States. In such rituals, which seem to be largely a twentieth century development, the centerpiece of the celebration typically includes a party at which the birthday girl (quinceañera) wears a long full-skirted gown and adornments such as flowers, jewelry, and a tiara. The aesthetics of the celebration are informed by a sense of "tradition" in which features such as candles, floral arrangements, pastel colors, and formal attire are understood to suggest an elegance and exclusivity that marks the celebration as apart from everyday life. But in this chapter, I consider quinces photography portraiture, and not the party, as a definitive moment in marking girls’ fifteenth birthdays in contemporary Cuba.