I’m pretty sure that the eyes are erogenous organs and erogenous zones. They touch, they taste, they talk, they sing, they smell love and danger, they reach the untouchable, they give a name to all things left behind and disowned, they build cathedrals of meaning and they are the supreme artists of inquiry.
I love so much and so dearly the foreign worlds you bring to mine, naked from noise and clutter so I can touch them through this window of phobic convalescence, and let them in and touch me in spite of ancient terrors and disturbing memories, in spite of my reluctance to let myself be touched and embraced. I so much appreciate the simplicity of your glance, free from any intention to sell anything, and I have been privileged to be the fugitive voice of all those strangers, and most of all, to play your voice for a while, as if I were you doing the click, or even better, as if we were doing it together as a team.
My whole vision of the world has changed along sixteen weeks of walking your eyes, instead of your shoes. And it has changed forever.
Thank you for this bewildering joyride.
From the bottom of my heart.
Paz Puente Greene
From the bottom of my heart.
Published on Agosto 18, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Street Tags: featured
I have a real soft spot for some strangers that look straight into my eyes and cry for help without a word, without a tear, without stopping to say ‘hey, you, I’m completely lost and screwed up, let’s share a beer, come on, I’ll pay the drinks… Don’t know where to start, let’s say I’ve been fired from my job, some days I want to kill my wife and cut my children to pieces, but I’m a good guy, so I will probably shoot my head off with my brother’s gun.’
Neither of us stop, I go home as if someone had hit me with desperate eyes in the middle of the stomach and food tastes bitter and I somewhat pray for my work to be like one of those cardiopulmonary reanimation devices of emergency rooms and ambulances. One capable of shocking almost dead lives into hope or into wonder or into awareness or indignation or into sweetness, or into love, or into innocence or into each other. Again.
Published on Agosto 17, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Street Tags: cartography
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.
Published on Julio 24, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Record, Street Tags: all about me, anima mia, blemished, revelations
I humbly and faithfully cherish a lodge of mentors, most of them gone: the tutelary spirits of photography. One of the members of this lodge is Robert Capa, who said that if a photo is mediocre or lifeless, you weren’t close enough. That’s the reason why I often cross the same line that cross stalkers, voyeurs and exhibitionists.
I’m a shy, discreet man, but the need to capture life naked and off guard gives me the arrogance, the boldness, the immodesty necessary to do my best with the only precious talent I think I’ve got.
Published on Julio 22, 2009 7:17 am.
Filed under: Camera, Forest and birds, Street Tags: all about me, cartography, the moment
When sorting material I can notice a persistent pattern of polarities.
A photo is either accidental or incidental, Kairos (the perfect moment portrayed) or Kairos not (something is missing or absent, the sensation of incompleteness). Connected to the subject, eye-to-eye gazing, posing, spontaneous adjustment to the context or aware of a subject unaware of the camera. Witnessing a feeling, an emotional quality from a distance or being one with the feeling, as a symbolic reflection of what’s going in my life at the moment. Poignant or just ankle-deep. Intimate or anthropological. Testimonial or augury. Cast off of possessed. Ungraspable or bond. Carnal or sacred. Question or answer. Vague or categorical. Push or pull.
And beyond the tension between polarities, there is the silent dialogue, the closeness, the yearning that brings eye and the beauty of what is seen together as one. The whirlpool of mysterious attraction. The thrill of the ride, the pansexual flinch of unpronounced language. The rush to touch and embrace. Under full spectrum light, the appeal of darkness.
Published on Julio 21, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Departure of reality, Street Tags: Behavior
Watermelon hopelessly waited for execution.
Tomatoes, in total observance and acquiescence to the Lawful Authority, piled up in the bucket to prevent and suffocate any sign of insurgency and uprising.
But Green Pepper began to doubt the righteous and blameless power of the oppressor and outtalked Small Sissy Green Pepper to turn the Pink Tower upside down, yelling ‘Freedom! Equality! Brotherhood!’
There was copious red spill and smashed seeds on the paving stone and in its fast way street across, Watermelon tasted the brief magnificence of seven seconds of bounty, before cracking up against the water font.
No one honored the heroes. Both ended in the frying pan.
Published on Julio 14, 2009 7:03 am.
Filed under: Color or colour, Street Tags: unexpected
She had a deep longing for someone who didn’t want to change her habits, thoughts or looks. She was done with an authoritarian father, bossy lovers, macho managers and contemptuous therapists.
After a decade of serial dating, she picked up the phone and officially became a regular escort client.
At some point as grown up, a woman may find great relief in the integrity of her bliss, and stop asking for permission or absolution for what she really wants.
Most of her girlfriends are jealous and they comment upon her behavior when she’s not present.
She is not that old to pay for company, and she is sexy, more than the average. Why should she get a gigolo, then?
There’s a certain body language indicative of discomfort or boredom in a man.
I’m a photographer. My job is to read other’s minds through their gestures.
Believe me. The guy was at home with her.
She sucked on a chupachups while paying absorbed attention to the races.
He was leaning his chest on her back, softly holding her hips.
I imagined that perfect red manicure running on his chiseled rear delts or pecs.
The portrait of perfect love.
Published on Julio 10, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Camera, Remix, Street Tags: Madrid, the moment, Who are you?
It’s not their struggle for belonging, equality, social evenness and self esteem.
It’s our pitiful failure to take a warm look skin deep enough to realize that our crooked, freakish and gargoylish self image is coming back to get us.
Such a sad circus, such Grand Guignol only for us, the blind and the deaf.
Such a display of desperation carefully hidden under loads of makeup and silicone, only for us, who won’t dare to see.
Published on Julio 6, 2009 7:05 am.
Filed under: Street Tags: Madrid
