“Sitting here in limbo, but I know it won’t be long”, sung Jimmy Cliff and that phrase was the clue for my next photographic investigation. My subject was Zenobia, the daughter of a wealthy family from Chicago who was taking a vacation on a tropical island of the Pacific with a suitcase full of golden coins for her expenses. It was a tradition in her family to pay only with gold, but in this island the authorities in the airport had never encountered a similar case -most of them had never seen golden coins before- so they confiscated her gold until a higher authority decided it was OK to give it back. Until then, Zenobia was living in limbo, spending her days in a coffee shop near the airport, waiting for a new development. I know that my powerful, mysterious employers had the power to arrange for her to have her gold back, but they wanted me to photographically investigate her. So I did it fast, because I don’t like for my subjects to be miserable…
Read MoreSometimes a photographic investigator tests herself just to see if former subjects would produce the same insights in the present. They don’t of course… Something new, something exiting is always around the corner. This is a promise that can’t be broken.
Read MoreThe clue for this photographic investigation was “The van”. Fortunately, an experienced photographic investigator is used to think out of the box and rarely takes her clues literally. It was very easy to locate the miniature van and photographically investigate the subject behind it. Not that I am complaining, but sometimes I think that my mysterious -but very generous- employers need to challenge me a little more…
Read MoreIn dark times shamans had to protect themselves under an energetic cloak. Likewise, good witches had to disguise themselves in darkness, in order to awaken in us, undetected, the sparks of love and light that connect us to the divine. To be photographically investigating one of these exceptional creatures was a rare privilege and I enthusiastically took the assignment, disregarding the ensuing depletion of my energy - inter dimensional photographic investigations tend to have that effect on me…
Read MoreThe code name for this assignment was “Magnificat” (My soul magnifies the Lord). Immediately the reality of something that Lester Levenson pointed out struck me: that when you dive into the very core of a feeling, you will observe that nothing is really there. Like looking at a magnified object. The more magnified it is, the less detectable it is. My subject was a heiress experiencing an intense feeling of unease and dissatisfaction about the fact that she had to pursue studies in theology in order to receive the 24 billion dollars that were hers… A photographic investigator must let her subjects realise the truth on their own, though.
Read MoreAnother photographic investigation, another mystery with a code name… This time my subject was a renown spacecraft designer and the possessor of a classic greek beauty.
Read MoreIn that particular inter-dimensional photographic investigation all music was forbidden in the cafeterias because of a deadly virus that entered the human organism through the vibrations that hit the eardrums. And also through the pores of the skin situated in the chin. So there was no music and everybody was wearing chirurgical masks around their chin. A photographic investigator frequently encounters things that in our dimension would be considered strange - but not there. But even in this depressing dimension there was a way out: it was referred to with the code name “Chicago” and my assignment was to discover what exactly this was. It was a total success, but unfortunately -as it happens in many cases- I cannot reveal more at this point…
Read MoreA photographic investigator always has warm relations with people that most would call “unconventional”. Like -in this case- tarot readers and fortune tellers. It was in a meeting with a tarot reader that he pointed out that my spirit animal for the month of May would be the bat. I wouldn’t really know what to do with this information if at the same moment I were not browsing through one of my latest photographic investigations: the girl with the bat on her blouse. And then that famous sonnet from Shakespeare came to mind:
Read MorePrentice Mulford said: “The man -or woman- who succeeds must always in mind or imagination, live, move, think and act as if he -or she- had gained that success, or he -or she- will never gain it”. I was hired to photographically investigate Zenobia’s journey to the manifestation of her desires. “Something new, something wonderful” was the theme of the investigation. And a photographic investigator helps her subjects through manifestation having faith in them. “Faith is the power to believe and the power to see”, Prentice Mulford also said…
Read MoreIt was the afternoon of a busy day and my photographic investigation was taking place without me being fully aware of it, surrounded by the beautiful sounds of blackbirds and the sounds of the birds that I could hear in Takashi Kokubo’s album “Jamaica” that was the soundtrack of this assignment. Zenobia was tired and lacked oxygen. I didn’t go to the Jamaica soundscape to investigate, but I did it anyway.
Read MoreA few days before the lockdown, I was reading James Allen’s “As a Man thinketh”, a book that proved to be very helpful during the photographic investigation that took place then and the results of which you see here. The following quote reflects accurately the spirit of the investigation… “Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought, and both pleasant and unpleasant external conditions are factors which make for the ultimate good of the individual. Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself.“
Read MoreThat is the main question that’s popping in a photographic investigator’s mind in days where photographic investigations are an underground activity and mysterious viruses infect mysteriously a mysteriously large percentage of mysteriously selected parts of the planet. Being a big Doctor Who fan, I am one of those photographic investigators that wonders… But, the thing with The Doctor is that he is probably here working on the situation, but we have missed him just because we were looking for him. So I am reviewing some of my latest photographic investigations just in case my camera took a glimpse of him without me noticing. It happens very often…
Read MoreI had in mind an Alan Watts lecture titled “Mind over mind”. A photographic investigator realises sooner or later that whenever the function or action of the mind is detected, a photographic investigation is impossible. And because trying to escape the mind is a function of the mind, ignoring it is the only way to go. This is really the measure of any fresh and original photographic investigation. The photographic investigator can’t dismiss the mind altogether, but the experienced one let it “think” it get’s it’s way, while the photographic investigation itself is about something else. Something ineffable, therefore untouched by the mind. Until it is published, of course…
Read MoreThis photographic investigation reminded me the fantastic 1941 film noir with the beautiful Gene Tierney. The only clue that I had was the word “gesture” and although I was very well acquainted with my human subject, I had no idea why I was investigating her for the 100th time… The life of a photographic investigator is full of unresolved mysteries that, just as it occurs in a good film noir, are answered unexpectedly at the end of the film after a plot twist that leaves even the most experienced viewer completely silent. The same thing happened to me at the end of this photographic investigation that “informed” me why it happened the way it happened, at the very end.
Read MoreA photographic investigator knows that the most extraordinary things happen in what most people call “ordinary moments”. But then, there are no ordinary moments - you have figured that out by now, haven’t you? So extraordinary is ordinary. And vise versa. And although my most prestigious and mysterious assignments take place in exotic or hidden or even mysterious places, in reality my best photographic investigations happen in between assignments…
Read MoreShe was beautiful and dangerous. And she knew about coffee. She was a coffee spy, and although she wasn’t my first spy-subject, Ia must admit she was very elusive. Her name was Xena, she was worthy of the name of the the Warrior-Princess and not only I photographically investigated her successfully, but I got her to make me a coffee as well!
Read MoreThe tricky thing with the Menu of Life is not so much WHAT to order, but HOW to order… The menu consists of all the things one can possibly imagine -therefore CAN have- but usually people think that someone must bring to them whatever they choose while they hold in their hands the menu of a self service establishment. Nevertheless, as a photographic investigator, it is my job (and my pleasure) to photographically investigate the efforts of my subjects to order. I always wish that they succeed, but I can’t intervene. You see, there are rules in my profession…
Read More“Divine ideas never conflict” wrote Florence Scovel Shinn and I have found that to be very true. So my assignment was to photographically investigate this place called “The Realm of Perfect Ideas” but, as always, first I had to find it. My only clue was: “Mona Lisa wears sunglasses” .I also knew that there would not be the slightest sign of a conflict. So I followed Mona Lisa. It was a coffee shop where people were exploring alternative endings to The game of Thrones saga with great enthusiasm -preoccupation as well. You see, 8 years of a mortal’s life are too much to be lost to a bad, another man’s story… So people begun to write theirs. I always knew that soap operas lead to enlightenment. Now I knew that the same can happen with TV shows with a much greater budget. Ah well…
Read MoreThings had changed. A trip to Graceland wasn't a romantic fool's dream anymore... You see, Graceland had passed in the hands of a mysterious organisation that made it invisible to this dimension -unless you had a very special map. And this map wasn't so easy to find. I was photographically investigating a courageous group of Graceland explorers who thought that knew where to find that map - I was after the map myself.
Read MoreThat was the name of her destination, a place one could travel to without moving, since it was in another dimension. I have done so many trips of that sort in my photographic investigations career that I was reluctant to follow. Interdimensional travel is very dangerous for the life of the photographic investigator because it depletes -in a very rapid rate- the vital energy supplies. I didn't have much of them anymore. But a photographic investigator can't just sit and preserve whatever energy she has left. It's like being dead already. "You never know which one could be your last investigation" I thought to myself. It might as well be this one.
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