Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

French Woman With Log - I Tend My Flowers For Thee

Saturday, November 15, 2014

In my not too frequent perusal of my extensive files of photographs, negatives and slides always wonder about the one that is filed simply as French Woman With Log. Inside there is a white envelope with 18 frames in b+w of Kodak SO-115. This was a precursor to the finest grain film ever made Kodak Technical Pan. It was not all that easy to use as its exposure rating was a slow 25 and a special developer had to be used to control the heavy contrast that was inherently built-in to a film that had been designed for astronomers to photograph solar flares.

The only other information on the envelope is Wreck Beach early 80s. That would be correct as Technical Pan came into production in the mid 80s and it replaced SO-115 and the other (also fine grained) SO-410.

I remember nothing about the woman except she was from Paris. I have no idea if she knew someone I knew or if I simply went up to her and asked, “May I photograph you?”

By the mid 80s I was not in the least shy and I wonder why I did not ask the French Woman With Log to take her bikini off. We were on a nudist beach after all. But I must admit that I have no recollection. Except for one or two most of the pictures I took as a profile on the same large drift wood log.

When I looked at the pictures today I thought of two things. One was about sand. I had a Manila-born uncle Luís Miranda who was my maternal grandfather’s first cousin. His comment on going to the beach (in his perfect Castilian Spanish) was, “I don’t like to go to the beach because sand gets into my shoes.”

My other observation upon seeing the pictures of the French Woman on the Log is that she had an obvious and very special sensuality about her even though I now have no memory for her voice or what we talked about. I even love the worry lines on her forehead.

As I wonder about how she might have looked without her bathing suit there is a poem by Emily Dickinson that comes to mind. On a first reading you might think it is all about flowers in a garden. But after a second reading you might suspect the poem is about her (or a surrogate) taking it all of (ripping it off in some places) for a neutral observer.