Havana Buzz was shot in 2015 in Havana, Cuba. Once a majestic and cosmopolitan city at the heart of the Spanish colonial empire, turned playground for the American wealthy and powerful in the first half of the 20th century, for nearly 60 years Havana has been the capital of one of the last remaining socialist regimes in the world. This historical U turn is at the core of Havana's unique identity. The anti-urban character of Cuba's communist rule and the inflexible embargo imposed by the United States cast a paralyzing spell on the lavish metropolis, freezing it in time. Havana Buzz explores Cuba's capital at this time of much awaited historical transition. Caught in fleeting glimpses from its public buses, Havana's features are dispassionately laid bare, and the truth is revealed beyond the myth. Behind the romantic languidness of its urban relinquishment, the daily struggles for survival of an impoverished but resourceful population are displayed against the backdrop of anachronistic propaganda billboards, decrepit housing estates, crumbling infrastructures and a lush tropical nature that reclaims its rule after man's neglect. Yet, the signs of change are visible throughout the city and the new appears to seep relentlessly through the cracks of the past, creating a unique blend of antique and nouveau, nostalgia and hope, disillusionment and elation.

Cosmelli and Gaia Light's Milano Buzz is the second chapter of their ongoing series The Buzz Project, a portrait of contemporary cities and their inhabitants as seen from the window of public transport--in this case the ubiquitous city bus and trolley car. Captured literally in passing, each image is a chance arrangement of figures that appeared for a brief moment in front of the camera before the bus moved on, gleaning hidden or transitory states of being and extracting enduring moments from the swirling tides of the contemporary city. Published in the wake of Cosmelli and Light's 2012 volume Brooklyn Buzz, this volume is a visual exploration that links the city center to its suburbs, the high and the low, the glamorous and the real. It is a portrait that bares the multifaceted and cosmopolitan soul of a city that will play host to the 2015 Expo.

Italian-born photographers Alessandro Cosmelli and Gaia Light's "Brooklyn Buzz" uses the framing device of a bus window frame, and the attendant serendipities of photographing on a moving vehicle, to present an extended photographic portrait of Brooklyn and its inhabitants. Cosmelli and Light have been photographing Brooklyn, their adopted home since 2007, capturing the borough at its most social and vibrant. "The windows work as filters with the outside," they write of this project, "sometimes like enlarging lenses, amplifying, revealing unpredictable details, capturing life as it is in that precise moment, in the streets, at the bus stop, through the windows of a local deli; other times they work more like protective barriers that allow you to deeply penetrate people's lives." Analogous to Frank's "The Americans" as a European eye on America, "Brooklyn Buzz" is full of effervescent charm and warmth.