Rome Inverted

After a ruinous trip to Rome, where all my medium format film was trashed in-camera, there comes a time for strategies to try and rescue some of it.
My formula is simply to make callotypes and let the chips fall where they may.
That way I relinquish all responsibility and rational thinking to the spirits of the unknown streak of light and heavy spots pretending to resemble a crazy moon. Voilà.

Happenstance

Some images are better remembered by being totally untraceable and hard to define.
They seem to come out of nowhere and materialize before our eyes in no time.
This is one of them. Its source is undefined and its purpose more so. It resulted from an illogical step by step using two unseemly negatives.
The result is an intriguing photograph rich in ambivalence, hard to pin down.
I cannot keep my eyes from it and that is enough.

Scene From Somewhere

In the past few years I have intensified the recording of segments, or parts thereof, in the lives of my children. Impossible task as we all know. I try perhaps in vain to commit to visual memory as much as I can. Sometimes there show in the negatives one or two images that raise my pulse. This one in particular, taken ten minutes out of school a week ago, rendered something absolutely beautiful. A moment in time which extends itself to enter the visual lore of noir mischief. I may have seen this scene somewhere in a cinema house in my past. Maybe eastern European. Most definitely English. Kent all the way, with its relentless beauty even under severe grey skies and some hint of desolate earth. And a bit of sun, miraculously.

Acrylic Smear

                                                             
                                                                   Acrylic Smear
The present project shows the interaction between two radically different mediums. On the one hand there is the traditional negative-derived imagery, and on the other the free flowing untamed smear of the acrylic, used to coat over parts of the established positive.
The resulting images can neither claim to be photographs, though they are, nor paintings, as they are not. They are hybrids borne by complementary associations.
I call them “smeared” images. The smear taken as a superimposition both in tone and flow produces a resonant echo. It also acts as a denial that pretends to obscure their visual definition by force of the layers of colour imposed upon them.
Thus accepted the resultant pieces acquire a derivative truth by assimilating two visual currents, not always necessarily happy in conjunction with each other, but not altogether unpleasant, in this particular case.

Nature Mother of All Metaphors

Adam King Devant le Miroir

Arte Condenado a la Ignominia del Olvido - The Vatican Gardens

Rigidez, gracia, elegancia y dulzura en la arquitectura

La Atracción de la Altura... (Capilla Sixtina, El Vaticano)

Este tipo mira hacia arriba como lo hacen millones de otros cada mes del año. Imposible no hacerlo ya que la atracción principal es patrimonio de la historia de la humanidad. Los frescos de la Capilla Sixtina atraen gente de todo el mundo y esto ha originado una polémica en el Vaticano.
Se estima que los humores, el sudor, la respiración de tanto turista encajonado y arreado como si fuera ganado camino de la feria, hacen sufrir la eterna obra de Miguel Ángel. Es muy probable.
Lo peor no son los sudores y sí más bien la falta de respeto de quienes van allí, no a admirar en silencio una de las más grandes riquezas del género humano, sino a sentarse a botar caspa mientras descansan cinco minutos antes de proseguir "acumulando galerías", para luego salir despavoridos a buscar el MacDonald's más cercano.

The Canterbury Files

Two Facets of Marina

Travels around my room

Passage of Life

This is what I wrote five years ago in this blog:

Quebec City, summer of seventy four, my first camera and first wife. A small room in a provincial town with wonderful light streaming in from the outside. One never thought of preserving memory, it was all about photographing, not keeping records. But in the end that's what happens. It is a record kept for thirty odd years, of a time inexorably lost.
I must be thankful for the negatives so well preserved. There would be no memory without them.
I must confess, on the other hand, that, having given the image a tinted look it makes it speak of another era, and it can only mean that my mental association with the place evoke visuals bathed on that ineffable sepia glow...


This is what I wrote today:

Five years ago, going through my old prints, I found this image of my first wife, Margaret Thurlow. It recalled pointedly those early years of my life as an immigrant in Canada, my attempts at being a man in love with photography and the very first vacation that I had ever taken as an adult.
It was a wonderful time, with wife on board and the fantasy at hand to do whatever came to mind while free of duties and a camera nearby.
A few months ago I received the sad news that Margaret had passed away, in Santa Cruz, California, and of course the dark clouds of reality started to gather over my head. Age and the diminishing probabilities to do what needs to be done before our turn at the head of the queue all came cascading forth. So it goes.
These few sentences and the accompanying portrait should suffice to pay homage to the  woman who taught me photography and was a very good human being all of her life.

Roma; la cama sin tender, la calle en movimiento

Quién sabe qué sucede detrás de las ventanas de un cuarto piso, cuando la noche se esparce y los neones y las luces de la calle comienzan a alumbrar nuestros pasos. Tantas veces me he hecho esta pregunta: quiénes se aman detrás de esas ventanas; qué seres se estremecen despechados en pequeños lechos de una sola vía, abrazados a una almohada solidaria que ensordece el llanto pasivo de amores  sin destino...?
Afuera, en la calle, la noche romana recién empieza y suben hasta el piso, la estrecha camita destendida, los zapatos tirados al desgaire, los ruidos de cafés y discotecas vecinas, anunciando el inicio de una noche más de farra y la alegría impostora del vino y el vodka...la eterna soledad una vez más, sin rumbo y sin memoria.

Green Room, Madrid

Morning sunlight through the door

Turbine Room Tate Modern

Square, angles, triangles, tree shadow

Shiny Steps

Blue, White, Yellow, Red, London

Mínima Aproximación al Absurdo (What Not To Do On a Sunday Afternoon)