Until now

I was searching for some random information in a book about Indian art, when pages opened, like wings of an albatross, and there was a photograph I took years ago in Musee d’Orsey, in Paris.

A girl in nude and her black cat are looking at me.

A couple from Far East are fidgeting with information about a Museum (?).

A lady, dressed like a person from a Parisian studio, is observing the couple.

A servant is paying attention to a model on a painting.

And I imagined myself taking a photograph, while all of that richness of criss-crossing gazes, happened in front of me.

I remember being disappointed, when I saw this picture for the first time. So, I used it as an irrelevant bookmark. I didn’t notice its true rationale.

Until now.

While clearing up a far corner of my desk, under a postcard with a cubist painting by Georges Braque, I noticed a small print of a woman in a white dress.

She is walking in a flowing manner in front of a solid, hard wall of the Bank of England.

I remember so well that fleeting moment, a fraction of a second, when she suddenly turned her face towards me, while I was just about to release a shutter. In that amazing coincidence her body, her personality was like a Greek statue.

I didn’t see it at that time. I thought that it wasn’t sharp, therefore not good.

Until now.

On a high shelf, in a spare room, I keep old prints, which never made it to my exhibitions.

They (I decided on those occasions) are neither here nor there.

They were still in my house, but only just.

They were on their way out.

Today was a day of reckoning and as I was checking them up at a rapid rate, eyes of a Dutch rock star pierced into mine.

It was taken during a wild time, while I had travelled throughout Holland for days and nights with his band, which did their best to live up to their “bad” image.

It was all in his vulnerable, sensual, unpredictable face.

I always thought that it was just a document of those hundreds of hours, which we spent together on the road. I didn’t see that this was a portrait of a person who went too far. Or maybe not far enough.

Until now.

At that point I decided to search for a portrait of one of my students. Once I asked him to stand in a studio, in front of a meaningless board. I needed to test a set up I had arranged using powerful strobe lights. I took a single frame. Then something happened (I don’t remember what) and the project was aborted.

Later on, as it was my habit, I printed that image, along with rest from that film. This was it.

Now he is looking at me and I don’t even remember his name. Yet, he appears to have been so real, true and intense, when he stood in front of me, while I was focusing on his eyes.

I created all those images only to reject them later. Until now.

Tonight they are spread out on the table.

Suddenly the disparity between what we do instinctively and how we measure the results became obvious to me. I saw with my own eyes that it all depends on the conscious (often too rigid) perception of ourselves and some current expectations. That we choose to miss what is original, what should amaze us, only because it is too unusual to our routine manner of thinking.

“Never again” I informed a little statue of Shiva, which is sitting on my desk.

Shiva said nothing …. I suppose this is his (wise) manner of being in this world.

Maybe I have to learn this too.