These days in my time to think which seems to be, in its limitation, quite infinite into how many derivations each thought takes me, I wonder about that relationship of me the photographer, the camera and my subject on the other side. Is this important? Or is it a personal obsession that will prevent me from thinking about things that may matter more like my preparation for death?

I have thousands of negatives, slides and photographs of people’s faces. I look at each one of them and the memory of taking them takes me back to the sounds of their voices, feelings and in some cases the sweet smells of their perfume or in the case of the piece of literature here by Julio Cortázar his smell of cigarros Arizona which I used to buy for him at the corner store when he visited my father in Coghlan in Buenos Aires.

In the late 80s my Rosemary took me to a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society. We sat on uncomfortable chairs in VanDusen’s Floral Hall and somebody projected over 100 terrible slides of rose close-ups. I looked at Rosemary and told her, ”You have brought me to this?”

Of course I fell in love with roses and I vowed I would never photograph them. I have (a bit) but I mostly think I am not breaking my vow because I scan them.

But if 100 bad slides of people were projected I would be alert. Rosa ‘Double Delight’ might be a beautiful rose with very nice fragrance (true) but after a few projections boredom would set in, not so with the face. There is such a variety in the human face that even with identical twins we want to discern how one is different from the other.

With many of my pictures I look at them and I know that time has changed what I see (in some instances time has faded or stained the very pictures I am looking at). Some of my faces are of people that are now dead. Others I have lost with the shifts of moving and different interests. In others I am enthusiastic of the prospect of taking new photographs in which the progression of time can add to the complexity of a portrait.

In the case of Caitlin Legault’s reversed b+w Polaroid peel I look at perfection and think if you have a perfect face how can another person have that,  too. Are there two perfect faces? What would Plato say of the essence of the human face, one we would see as we emerge from that dark tunnel with the flickering fire that projects imperfection onto the back wall?


Rayuela - Capítulo 7  - Julio Cortázar


 Toco tu boca, con un dedo toco el borde de tu boca, voy dibujándola como si saliera de mi mano, como si por primera vez tu boca se entreabriera, y me basta cerrar los ojos para deshacerlo todo y recomenzar, hago nacer cada vez la boca que deseo, la boca que mi mano elige y te dibuja en la cara, una boca elegida entre todas, con soberana libertad elegida por mí para dibujarla con mi mano por tu cara, y que por un azar que no busco comprender coincide exactamente con tu boca que sonríe por debajo de la que mi mano te dibuja.