As a photographer, I’ve come to realize that certain emotions are invisible to eyes in immediate reality, but they appear, so uncanny familiar, so violent, so touching, once revealed in a photograph. Sometimes I wonder what my life would be if I couldn’t keep record of the overlooked, if I couldn’t stay a minute mindfully, compassionately connected with all the disowned selves of mine that show up in brief encounters, in relationships of no more than half of a minute.
What would my life be like if I couldn’t touch the spent threads of the past interweaved in the silken clothes of present. What kind of person would I be, unaware of the subtle evidence of human suffering meeting me at the borders of a shot?
Photography lets me feel the chill of winter on the skin and in the soul of strangers, and gives me a glimpse of their lives as a whole. It makes me aware and pushes me through the thickness of thought, more open, more available, much more tender and humble. And most of all, more careful and insightful, both qualities without which no photographer can evolve to what others call genius, and I suspect it’s the consistent choice to follow inner truth and inner knowingness, wherever they take us, whatever the moment we are meant to freeze so others can seize what really happens, what really happened and even foretell what is about to happen, beyond any attempt of self-definition.

(*) Quote by Theodore Roethke.

As knowledge is born from the desire to know, vision is born from the desire to see.
Art is the drive to share both, knowledge and vision.
Every artist is dancing naked in the dark, drunk with anticipation, taking risks into the unknown and the impossible, so the audience can confirm or argue down their understanding of what is real and find solace in the certainness of transcendence.
Time is humbled through art. Artists are the warriors of all things impermanent and eventually, they give us a focus, a notion of mystery, always available for an intimate dialogue.
In our times, the dominant misunderstanding between the artist and the audience is all the media-noise telling us where to look and what to see, wrecking any possibility of real awakening or awareness, establishing the rules in behalf of marketing.
Media-feeding can provide images and concepts, but cannot substitute the feeling of true initiation or satisfy our original, untouched and ever new desire for authenticity. And what is worse: it numbs our awareness, it snaps us out of truth, and makes us forget those who bet the bushes in the jungle of meaning only to carve the maps of this brave new world.

Ava bought a house in La Moraleja. A house with a witch-shaped weathervane on the roof, called La Bruja. She paid 66.000 dollars for it in 1954. Then she moved to a flat in Oquendo and finally to a duplex in Doctor Arce, right above Peron’s apartment, while the argentinian ex-dictator was exiled in Madrid.
Against all popular sayings about housekeepers tendency to gossip, the janitor of her last residence in Spain -retired and old, but yet very clear minded- still refuses to reveal any secret about the rave bacchanals running upstairs, which made Peron go mad very often.
According Ava, Peron had one very disturbing trait. He would often march out onto his balcony, and make loud, arm-waving speeches to the empty street below. The speeches disturbed his next-door neighbor, who felt he let down the tone of the vicinity.
Ava had always been a potty mouth. She knew that the pejorative Spanish word for homosexual was maricón which rhymes nicely with Perón. So every time he step onto his balcony and began to demagogue his invisible supporters, she gathered her assistants and formed an opposition party by chanting in unison Perón es un maricón, Perón es un maricón.
He hated her wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, Ava attended secret teas with María Estela and loved her home made empanadas.
The Barefoot Comtessa would sleep all day and get up to go to Oliver, Riscal (Archy, nowadays) and Chicote after dark. Tequilas, Old Fashions, Mai Tais and Manhattans were served to her in a row until closing time. Most barmans were told never to charge her the drinks. A lady in waiting who always hanged around called the taxis and pushed her into them and then into bed, if she didn’t pick up a bailaor or a young torero to sleep with, in her futile attempts to forget Frank Sinatra.
A few witnesses of those post-war Hollywood years in Spain remember that she even drove fast cars across the city outskirts, completely drunk, landing herself in crashes no one but her could leave unharmed.
They also remember her whimsical exercise in abounding excess, her exuberance, her generosity, her magnificent audacity to make choices and face the consequences without a trace of pathos, sulks or self-pity.
She was really determined to fit in and would ask in her best Spanish, ¿Quieres una copita? or let the gypsies plop their babies on her lap to hold during flamenco dances.
Wild and innocent at the core, flamboyant and perpetually undone, she was even barred from the Ritz for peeing in the lobby, but if you ask the ones that shared those wild years with her, all of them will say she was larger than life and most of all, unforgettable.
Reportedly, a lone black limousine parked behind the crowd at Ava’s funeral.
No one left the vehicle, but everyone assumed that the anonymous mourner was Frank Sinatra. Later, a beautiful floral arrangement at the graveside simply read: “With My Love, Francis”.

This light shining through my flesh upon things on to the ground. This light that I can barely name. This life belt, this umbilical cord, this secular appearance of a revenant God, this momentary oblivion of me.