My life to now has been full of people that I remember or I
have forgotten. Of some I only remember their faces but not their names. One person whom I can
recall vividly was a handsome young, blonde, blue eyed Argentine Navy lieutenant whose
voice I can place also in my memory. Years later he would fly suspected
Argentine terrorists (terrorists in that they were fighting a fascist military
regime). They might have been drugged or not. The fact is that this blonde
angel of death would slit their stomachs (so that they would sink quickly) and
push them off helicopters into the River Plate.
I could not have known this about him until recently so the enigma remains
how these people can switch from one state to another.
Other people in my life have passed by it briefly as the Frenchwoman with Log as she is labeled
in my photographic files. I must have photographed her in the late 70s on Wreck
Beach. I know she was French but I have long forgotten her name. I know nothing
of her and if I did I that information is gone.
I love her profile even though I did not know then how to
make my subjects pose so as not to show those unsightly neck folds.
My memory of the Blonde Angel of Death is vivid in my mind
while of the Frenchwoman with log is a fat and round zero in my recollection.
In modern photographic parlance photographers capture their
images. The three 35mm negatives (18 exposures) that are neatly filed represent
something that I cannot fathom except that these negatives are tactile. By
being tactile are they more real than my memory of that Blonde Angel of Death?