La Pierna Inquieta...

Sometimes an image remains a haunting proposition long after having come into existence and long after the photographer thought it was all but forgotten.
It seems to be the case with this nude taken on a distant afternoon of 1994 in the living room of a house on a hill in San Francisco.
It is funny how the details contribute to make these memories even more vivid and paint the whole exercise with a tint of romance and nostalgia. It was taken in a small house on Kansas Street, on the Potrero Hill District. There was a plum tree and a small rose bush in the garden which only produced a single strongly scented pink/orange specimen every summer...
This neg refuses to go away and this particular print, capriciously tilted and mysterious, remains strong and still enchanting.

A Child for all Seasons

My son's face is as variable as that of the light of day in whatever season he's living. The top shot, taken during a snowfall in February this year, brought an impish smile to his face since he could play snow dude and  make a snowman and throw snowballs at his sister and father.
The second image records a completely different mood and it is evident his distaste for having been asked to stand still for a few seconds in the middle of an unsuccessful crab-fishing expedition at the local beach.
All told, his life has moved on from being five to being six years of age, and these two shots should remain as testimony of the wonderful days spent frolicking around in winter as well as summer just about the time he is about to start the new year as a member of the Second Grade in his primary school.

Ricardo Pereira, Homeless Pilgrim at 73

I met this man everyday for two weeks at the door of the small church located in the Cathedral Square in Cádiz. Every morning I had a chat with him and every time his situation seemed to go from bad to worse. He had been a sailor or a harbour worker all his life. A few years ago he got into an altercation with his family and got kicked out of his own house in that city. He had been sleeping out in the open under the big area surrounding the back section of the cathedral. Some nights it was impossible for him to sleep: too many drunks, too many thieves, too many druggies with knives and too many fights all around him made it hard for him to have a proper rest. He has all but one single tooth left in his mouth and the nuns at the charity auspice where he went for his daily meal had to make him some vegetable puree because otherwise he could not eat.
He is a decent, soft-spoken man who allowed me to photograph him for the portrait on top of this page. The lower picture I got him whilst he was trying desperately to get some sleep as he sat at the entrance to the church, at eight in the morning, having been unable to sleep a wink the night before due to the aforementioned shenanigans of other rowdy homeless men. His little basket before him had a few coins, all copper, and not much else.

Ghosts in the Early Afternoon

A Ras de Tierra

In a Foreign Land and sick-as-a-dog Self-Portraits

So many references, so little time. (With apologies to Robert Doisneau)

Sometimes images jump at you from left field, out of the blue, as it were.
There I was in a camera shop in the Strand, London Olympic Year, minding my own business, talking tripods with a friend.
And then, whammo!, there is that image again: Le Baiser de L'Hotel de Ville, by the old master. I ran to the front of the store, camera at the ready, and managed to get it right just in time before the lovers disengaged from what seemed a tasty entretien and then they went their separate ways.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Praise the Lord... and Doisneau.

The Eighty One Year Difference

I have wanted to publish this image for a long time for reasons unknown except to the affection one feels for one's blood. I know it may sound a bit incongruous but that's how things are considering that one was born in 1922 and the other in 2003.
This is a link through the use of an old ID picture (my mother was 18 years old at the time, so it must have been 1940) and my young daughter who will be nine in two days. One exists young and growing, and the other one remains forever eighteen years old, etched in an old black and white shot and of course in my memory to my dying day.