Since I returned at the end of April from my trip to Buenos Aires I went through a few commitments I could not avoid. One of them was an appointment to have my enlarged prostate reamed (I like that word!). Then there were family obligations like taking care of my Rosemary who has a very bad left knee and dealing with my youngest daughter who is getting ready to move this Saturday the 19th to the little home they purchased in Burnaby, BC. I purchased a Canon Pro-1 printer and I am learning the ropes. It is a big change from my now gone darkroom. 

All the above have prevented me from writing more blogs about my trip to Argentina and I have to confess that I had a very large hole to fill since I did not write any while I was in Buenos Aires. Because of that gap I decided to write a few filler blogs (many with racy photographs) which were relatively easy to write. I am now ahead of myself but I could not resist in writing one more. So here it is.

For most of my photographic career I have studied a situation and then commited to doing it one way. The only variant might be to shoot the pictures in horizontal and vertical modes. This I have always done as it is one of the prerequisites of the magazine photographer to give the magazine art director photographs that will fill pages without unnecessary cropping.

In only a few (very few) instances has an art director said those terrible words after seeing pictures I have submitted for an assignment. These are:  “Alex, we are going to have to re-shoot this.”

El cuento El simulacro de Jorge Luís Borges, uno de los cuentos en mi copia de el hacedor es un cuento gótico y fantástico. Es extraño a mis hojos. Los que aún son militantes (y son muchos) en lo que refiere a todo lo que fue Perón y Evita consideran este cuento una barrabasada. Para mí, más neutro en mis opiniones del peronismo es un cuento formidable que me desquilibra. A continuación aquí está el cuento en castellano y en inglés.

El simulacro, a story by Jorge Luís Borges is one of the stories in my copy of his El hacedor. It is both Gothic and fantastic. The Gothic part in my mind is unique in this story as I don’t think there may be any others. Those who still see Perón and Evita’s regime favourably, and there are many consider el simulacro to be ample proof that Borges deplored Perón and his companion/wife. I am not all that sure but then while I lived the years of Perón and Evita until just before his fall I look at it with some element of neutrality. But every time I read this I feel uncomfortable and unsettled. Below you will find the story in Spanish and in English.

EL SIMULACRO – Jorge Luis Borges

        En uno de los días de julio de 1952, el enlutado apareció en aquel pueblito del Chaco. Era alto, flaco, aindiado, con una cara inexpresiva de opa o de máscara; la gente lo trataba con deferencia, no por él sino por el que representaba o ya era. Eligió un rancho cerca del río; con la ayuda de unas vecinas, armó una tabla sobre dos caballetes y encima una caja de cartón con una muñeca de pelo rubio. Además, encendieron cuatro velas en candeleros altos y pusieron flores alrededor. La gente no tardó en acudir. Viejas desesperadas, chicos atónitos, peones que se quitaban con respeto el casco de corcho, desfilaban ante la caja y repetían: Mi sentido pésame, General. Este, muy compungido, los recibía junto a la cabecera, las manos cruzadas sobre el vientre, como mujer encinta. Alargaba la derecha para estrechar la mano que le tendían y contestaba con entereza y resignación: Era el destino. Se ha hecho todo lo humanamente posible. Una alcancía de lata recibía la cuota de dos pesos y a muchos no les bastó venir una sola vez.

        ¿Qué suerte de hombre (me pregunto) ideó y ejecutó esa fúnebre farsa? ¿Un fanático, un triste, un alucinado o un impostor y un cínico? ¿Creía ser Perón al representar su doliente papel de viudo macabro? La historia es increíble pero ocurrió y acaso no una vez sino muchas, con distintos actores y con diferencias locales. En ella está la cifra perfecta de una época irreal y es como el reflejo de un sueño o como aquel drama en el drama, que se ve en Hamlet. El enlutado no era Perón y la muñeca rubia no era la mujer Eva Duarte, pero tampoco Perón era Perón ni Eva era Eva sino desconocidos o anónimos (cuyo nombre secreto y cuyo rostro verdadero ignoramos) que figuraron, para el crédulo amor de los arrabales, una crasa mitología.

Borges’s “El simulacro”

One day in July, 1952, the man dressed in mourning weeds appeared in that little village on the Chaco River. He was a tall, thin man with vaguely Indian features and the inexpressive face of a half-wit or a mask. The townsfolk treated him with some deference, not because of who he was but because of the personage he was portraying or had by now become. He chose a house near the river; with the help of some neighbor women he laid a board across two sawhorses, and on it he set a pasteboard coffin with a blond-haired mannequin inside. In addition, they lighted four candles in tall candleholders and put flowers all around. The townsfolk soon began to gather. Old ladies bereft of hope, dumbstruck wide-eyed boys, peons who respectfully took off their pith hats — they filed past the coffin and said: My condolences, General. The man in mourning sat sorrowfully at the head of the coffin, his hands crossed over his belly like a pregnant woman. He would extend his right hand to shake the hand extended to him and answer with courage and resignation: It was fate. Everything humanly possible was done. A tin collection box received the two-peso price of admission, and many could not content themselves with a single visit.

What kind of man, I ask myself, thought up and then acted out that funereal farce — a fanatic? a grief-stricken mourner? a madman? a cynical impostor? Did he, in acting out his mournful role as the macabre widower, believe himself to be Perón? It is an incredible story, but it actually happened — and perhaps not once but many times, with different actors and local variants. In it, one can see the perfect symbol of an unreal time, and it is like the reflection of a dream or like that play within a play in Hamlet. The man in mourning was not Perón and the blond-haired mannequin was not the woman Eva Duarte, but then Perón was not Perón, either, nor was Eva, Eva — they were unknown or anonymous persons (whose secret name and true face we shall never know) who acted out, for the credulous love of the working class, a crass and ignoble mythology.

My wife Rosemary was born in a very small town, New Dublin, Ontario that had two churches, one churchyard and not much else, but a nearby farm had horses. As soon as she was able she left town with a scholarship for Queens and never returned. We met in 1967 in Mexico City when she was 23. I was attracted to her blonde hair and her beautiful and long legs. Little was I to know then that I had married a snob.

It may have begun when she told me to pronounce Quebec as Kebek.

Since 1967 I have realized that I married someone with extremely good taste and that some might consider her to be uppity. That is not really the case as she is fundamentally very shy.