In a lifetime when you reach my age, 74, it is most obvious that one’s life has been made (regrets or not) and that I am done.

With access to politicians, movie stars, directors, harlots, hoods and musicians in my previous career as a magazine photographer I can objectively say that indeed I am obsolete, redundant and retired. The only people who call want to sell me Serius XM for our new Cruze or it is my rheumatologist’s assistant or that of the heart specialist and the urologist wanting to check me out. My dentist persists in wanting to make my teeth look perfect in an open coffin situation.

Friends are either dead, have moved or are busy with their smart phones. They are mostly out of the picture.

But not all is that depressingly bleak. Consider what happened to me this past Monday.

At 11:45 the doorbell rang and there were Argentine artist Nora Patrich and the luminous, ravishing, and beautiful Linda Lorenzo.

Juan Manuel Sánchez & Linda Lorenzo 2000

Patrich and her then husband Juan Manuel Sánchez and I photographed, drew, painted, sculpted, sketched Linda Lorenzo, or Argentine heritage in an exercise where we explored our nostalgia for our Argentina. We did this in 2000 and had a big gallery opening. Like the tip of an iceberg, perhaps only 15% of the photographs I took of Lorenzo ever saw the light of day and made their presence known framed. A few made is as “colaboraciones” with Sánchez and Patrich where they drew or painted around one of my photographs which in some cases they asked me to cut to a certain proportion.

Seventeen years later (sadly Sánchez died last year), Patrich, Lorenzo and I embarked on a revision (revise is the right word here) of our former rosy nostalgia. This time around the situation in Argentina is not so rosy and Patrich is as militant as ever in fighting the Trump-like current president of Argentina. Because of her militant and left-wing tendencies (she is in favour of labour unions) she is in town painting a large mural for the BCTF (British Columbia Teachers’ Federation). 

Patrich enthusiastically found the time to work with us.

But I am not going to place many photographs of Lorenzo here. These two will do. They prove that a beautiful young woman is not still beautiful 17 years later. No! She is more beautiful and there is that edge that comes with the wisdom of experience.

No, not all is depressingly bleak.