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| María de Lurdes Béjar - June 1991 |
One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon's younger brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: "I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor." Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but since no one seemed to share it, nor even understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it.
Chapter 1 - Camera Lucida - Reflections on Photography
Roland Barthes
Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. Some folks have sent me Christmas cards in envelopes with stamps on them. It seems to me that remnants of my 20th century are still surviving on the skin of their teeth.
I am using the term “skin of their teeth” because in 1960 at St. Edward’s High School in Austin, Texas, Brother Dunstan Bowles, C.S.C. introduced us to Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth.
I could not sleep but must have finally fallen into that other world of dreams around 2. I woke up at 10 and my considerate cats let me sleep. As I went down to feed them and make my breakfast it became obvious, as it is to me every day now, that I did not have to do anything today.
Finally I went into my cozy oficina and looked at some of my files. I decided that I would write a blog today that is not connected at all with the coming Christmas.
I took the photographs of the Mexican-born María de Lurdes Béjar in June 1991. A few years later she died. I had not yet connected the idea that nostalgia is something you have when you are not in the country you have nostalgia for. Much later I photographed my León, Guanajuato friend in many situations that evoked our mutual feelings for nostalgia for Mexico.
La cara de mi nostalgia por México
Because I am a photographer I have this constant thought when I look at pictures of people that I photographed in my past that are now dead and I wonder (as in feel wonder) that the person posing was alive and thriving. But, is now no more. This is a thought that immediately comes to me when I bring my breakfast tray (as I did today and every day) and place it on the side of the bed that Rosemary once occupied.
I believe that my constant thought of her non-existence, my thoughts of my own statistically soon-to-happen non-existence are exacerbated (wrong word I believe) are enhanced by the simple fact that the people of my life, most of them, faced my camera with me behind it.
This is why I always marvel at that quote by Roland Barthes. And I am horrified that I did not notice Béjar's neck folds. I always find a way of not showing them!
