Friday, April 27, 2012


When I was a little boy I could not understand why it was that my mother and grandmother would trek to Avenida Cabildo to shop for joyería de fantasía. These were fake jewels. They would come back with smiles on their faces and a smile much more noticeable on my grandmother’s face. She wore false teeth and their perfection dazzled like the glass diamonds on their bracelets and lapel pins. My grandmother would look at my puzzled face and say, “Nadie te quita lo bailado.” Which sort of translates into, “Nobody can take away from you the dances that you have danced.”





I look at these fishnet pictures of my former photography student who is a smart (both upstairs and just about everywhere else) Polish banker in London with much pleasure, of the “I’m so glad I danced that number,” kind of pleasure. Her clients might suspect at all what lurks under that banking desk. Perhaps my Polish banker is much more demure while at work.




I took these and many more, but far less demure, with a Nikon FM-2 and a 35mm lens. I loaded the camera with the now extremely defunct Kodak b+w infrared film. If my friend, writer Sean Rossiter would happen to see them he would say, using that favourite word of his, “Alex these are sensational!”



I would agree.