In was almost 20 years ago that I realized something that
should be self-evident to most. This is the fact that nostalgia is a longing
for a place you are not presently in when you feel it.
And so from my home in Vancouver, I have worked on photographs about my nostalgia for my boyhood and adulthood in Buenos Aires and the same for Mexico City and Mexico.
But of late my nostalgia is for five years that I spent in
Austin, Texas that were formative in my teenage years.
While living with my mother in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila (a
mining town run by American Smelting and Refining Company) the American-based
school finished with the 8th grade. The nearest school was the
Catholic boarding school, St. Edward’s High School in Austin.
I was there for
five years until 1961. It was there where I had my first girlfriend and had the
annoying problem of having to squeeze pimples at night before bed. It was there
where I listened to music that would remain indelible in my brain.
It was there where I experienced Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet at the University of Texas all in a nasal and terrible Texan accent.
It was there that I experienced chomping on a Texas-sized
steak on a metal plate that was so hot that it splattered grease on my shirt
while listening to Bill Black’s Combo.
It was there where we took girls to make out with at the
tower of the University of Texas Library Tower before anybody thought of going
up there to shoot people below.
It was there where I witnessed my first Cotton Bowl.
A few years ago I went to Austin to visit my old friend and
mentor Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. When I deplaned at the Bergstrom Austin
Airport I spotted some young women wearing skirts and cowboy boots. I kind of
new I was home.
In 1991 I photographed Bonnie in my Vancouver studio. She
had an amazing resemblance to Brigitte Bardot. I took many photographs never
feeling an ounce of nostalgia for Texas.
That has changed.
