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| Vanesa |
In that other century when you worked for agencies, magazines and newspapers it was a sacrosanct that all negatives, slides and prints were to be returned to me. In this 21st century that has become fuzzy. Digital images can be copied to be just as good as the originals. Thankfully since I am retired I do not have to face that conundrum.
When I look as successful painter friends who enthusiastically tell me that they have sold something I cannot understand how they must feel about losing their work. They have lost it haven’t they in spite of the money in the bank.
The closest I get to that painter/artist is when I lose a slide, photograph or negative.
Yesterday I re-purposed and old blog and brought it back and placed in in Twitter/X and Facebook. The blog illustrates the writing of my Newyorican friend, writer Jerome Charyn. I cited his autobiographical book involving his mother. I illustrated the blog with two lovely portraits of a young woman called Vanesa.
I looked everywhere in my files and because I could not remember her last name it seemed that she was lost. Her pictures (2), where in my computer with no last name.
Because I am a dyslexic I often misfile stuff. I went through three drawers of women I have photographed ( 500 plus). There was nothing. I tried again and I hit pay dirt. I had misfiled it. And the file was just plain Vanesa with no date or other reference.
In the file there were these two oddly printed photographs. I have no idea how I got those (to me) interesting results. I then picked the last negative from the session; scanned it and added red in Photoshop. Because I used 220 film in my Mamiya RB-67 there were 20 exposures in all.
I have found Vanesa. Who was she and where is she? I will never know.
