Because she alternated in talking to me in Spanish with English I soon learned that the verb to breast feed in Spanish is much more efficient as it is all one word – amamantar. I know that the word for mother mamá comes from the French as I am told by my excellent on line Diccionario de La Real Academia Española (RAE).

mamá

De mama 'madre', infl. en su acentuación por el fr. maman.

1. f. coloq. madre.

2. f. infant. madre (‖ animal hembra).

Also interesting is the Spanish word mamar

mamar

Del lat. mammāre 'amamantar'.

1. tr. Atraer, sacar, chupar con los labios y la lengua la leche de los pechos. U. t. c. intr.

Mamar means to suck and particularly to suck milk from the baby’s mother.

My grandmother often told me when I was silent about making any preference, “El que no llora no mama.”  This means literally that if you don’t cry you won’t get what you want.

What I like about the above that via the Latin mammare and the French maman there is a direct connection between the word mother and breast feeding. It becomes far more elegant that the unpoetical breast feeding.

Why am I raising this subject? Perhaps it is ancillary to showing here a photograph of a woman breast feeding her baby.

It is ancillary because I want to steer anybody who may have gotten this far to the idea that a photographer is a good as his (her) last shot in the same way a 19^th century gunfighter was as good as his (no her here) last duel. Second best and you were dead.

The picture you see here I took this morning. My subject is Itzel who is the daughter of my good friend the Argentine painter Nora Patrich. She lives in Spain with her husband Nicolás but she is presently in town on a visit with her daughter Paika and her son (the baby in the picture) Elías.

With not too many women in Vancouver seem willing to face my camera in my schemes to explore eroticism, Itzel “morning dew in Mayan” who has an artistic streak inherited from her mother, volunteered to pose for me. She told me that she wanted the photographs to reflect that she is a young mother.

The breast feeding idea came to my mind immediately. I wanted to take a photograph that was not in colour that was not touchy feely, that was not “gosh isn’t that nice.” I wanted a Helmut Newton approach to the idea that a woman breast feeding can be simultaneously getting ready for a night at the theatre.

So there you have it. This is today’s photograph and thanks to Itzel and Elías I believe it is very good.