Tropical heat and color

Cuba has long attracted photographers, from Walker Evans’s visually chaste images from his 1933 visit to the exactingly textured decay in Robert Polidori’s 2001 book “Havana.’’ Conversely, it’s given the world Abelardo Morell, who’s done impressive work of his own in his native land. The Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, just opened an exhibition titled “A Revolutionary Project: Cuba From Walker Evans to Now,’’ and there was last year’s excellent “Cuba in Revolution’’ show at the International Center of Photography, in New York.

The island is at once so different from the United States, yet so close geographically, making it a nearly unique blend of the exotic and accessible. Accessible, that is, until politics intervened. Politics, of course, lent the island a further fascination. Add in natural beauty; tropical lushness; cityscapes, courtesy of Havana; and, courtesy of the Caribbean, miles and miles of coastline as well as coastal light (more important for the camera): How could photographers not be drawn to Cuba?

The Webbs are a case in point. A married couple, they visited the island 11 times between 1993 and 2008. He’s been a member of Magnum, the celebrated photojournalism agency, since the ’70s. Her work, as she puts it, has focused on “the complicated relationship between people and the natural world.’’