My new subject, Tatiana, was working in Sorrento and I was there for it’s healing waters, as I have mentioned in a previous blog post (“The healing waters of Sorrento”). As usual, I had no idea about this new assignment, neither did I know that the woman who served me my sour cherry drink every day, was the one I had to photographically investigate. My clue came one night through intuition and via a dj who was strategically placed in the right time at the right bar by my mysterious employers. Intuition made me send a waiter to ask the name of a song I liked and the clue came in a piece of paper. The dj wrote: “Caritas abundant in Omnia” (“Love Aboundeth in All Things”). It was certainly not the song I’ve heard, but the name of a hymn written by Hildegard of Bingen -a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. I knew right away that I had to look around me for an angelic creature. This is the first part of this photographic investigation…
Read Moremonochrome
Strange creatures hiding in trees...
Magical places and mysterious creatures don’t impress a photographic investigator. If she can survive inter-dimensional travel with all it’s energy depleting implications, she certainly can handle elves, goblins and other strange presences that are lurking inside trees, becoming one with them, giving them a different kind of life. This impromptu photographic investigation happened when I realised that someone was watching me as I was laying on the beach on a warm autumn’s afternoon… But then, it was Halloween and the veil between the worlds was getting thiner than ever…
Read MoreThe healing waters of Sorrento
I was sent there for the healing waters. My mysterious employers offered me this assignment as a gift because they knew that my energy levels were depleting after so many inter-dimensional travels. I was grateful but I wasn’t seeing any results on myself, to be honest. But there was this man that me and a fellow investigator had noticed sitting always in the same position in a beach bar that was called Sorrento. We had figured that his indian name was “The one who sits” as we were “The ones who came”. One morning I took a long was after sunrise and I found myself in Sorrento. “The one who is sitting” was coming out of the water and a few seconds later in his place I saw a young woman fishing. And then I knew that I was transformed, because what we see is us, really…
Read MoreAn interview with Kay B.
It was really a pretext so I could get close to her. As usual, I was hired to investigate her. I didn't know why, only that she was a writer and a musician. I had to read her short stories and listen to her music and make her talk to me. What she didn't know was that it was really her pictures that were doing the talking. But I couldn't tell her that. I am often wondering about my employers motives when they send me to photographically investigate someone… I have managed to realise one thing: they know more about my subjects then what these subjects know about themselves. And of course that on the other hand there is always me... That all I really know about anything, is nothing.
More cats...
The cats that helped me with my assignment in the greek islands haven’t said their last word. It seems that there were some shots of them that I had forgotten. They were hidden in a secret file of a lost archive of a destroyed mobile phone - a photographic investigator uses all the potential tools that has in her disposal at the time of the investigation. The cats informed me about their existence and the long and adventurous search of them begun… After almost 2 years, we succeeded to recover them. And here they are!
Read MoreNeither artifice nor evasion
The clue about my new subject came with the wind. It was expected through the mail, but after an unprecedented explosion in the post office -a product of overwhelming anticipation for the upcoming Chinese New Year, the year of the Dragon- the wind took over the deliveries that the fire failed to eliminate. Only a small piece of half burned paper had survived, with the words: “Eyes with neither artifice nor evasion”. It was one of the more clear clues that I had received for a long time. I knew exactly where to find this amazing subject. The Year of the Dragon was approaching promising not to disappoint…
Read MoreSuddenly this fall...
Suddenly this fall everything was changing. A photographic investigator can -under extreme circumstances- manipulate planetary and galactic movements to maintain a situation that requires further investigating. And that was exactly what I was attempting this fall. Seven planets became retrograde in order to stop my subjects from moving into different realities. With no success so far. But a photographic investigator also can recognise when a full circle is complete and she surrenders her wants and needs to the wisdom of the universe.
Read MoreCall off the search
When a photographic investigator who discovers her subjects following clues that arrive at her doorstep by mysterious ways receives a note that says “Call off the search”, what is she supposed to do? Maybe stop looking and realise that her subject is closer to her than she could have ever imagined.
Read MoreTake the L train
My new assignment arrived while Dave Brubeck was playing “Take the A train”. My faithful companion brought me a piece of paper that said: “Initial”. In the life of a photographic investigator everything is interconnected and the course of the investigation -as well as it’s subject- are revealed by themselves without the necessity of thinking or wondering. The reason behind it always remains unsaid, though. But I am OK with it. Anyway, I knew that I had to replace the “A” with another letter and that that letter would be the initial of my subject’s first name. My intuition told me that was an
Read More"So where is the dust to cling?"
“Originally, Bodhi is not a Tree, Nor is the mind-mirror standing. Originally, not one thing exists,
So where is the dust to cling?”
The Jamaica Inn
My new assignment had to do with hair. My new subject’s hair, not hair in general. The Jamaica Inn was a hair salon and at the same time it was my only clue about her and where to find her. As any good photographic investigator I pretended to be a customer with a particularly bad hair week and got to work while a very handsome hair stylist was contemplating what to do with my hair. A photographic investigator is used to make sacrifices.
Read MoreWoman on the run
My subject was witness to a miraculous manifestation. And although the words “manifestation” and “law of attraction” are very widely used and invoked today, very few people actually believe that they work -this is probably why they prefer giving endless lectures about it. But some people can do it, and those people prefer keeping it a secret. So when I was hired to investigate an actual witness to a magical appearance of a mansion -the way Aladin’s lantern would do it- I knew that my subject was on the run and that the time I had was limited…
Read MoreThe locked door
I was about to watch a 1929 classic black and white film called “The locked door”, starring Barbara Stanwyck, when someone slipped a handwritten note under my door -that was also locked… My mysterious employers had not given me any sign of life for the last two years and I was worried that our secret operations had been revealed to the wrong people. I was in no danger, of course, but I had missed my secret assignments. My faithful helpers, Juanita and Lupe were begging me for some action. I guess cat’s wishes are more rapidly answered… The note provided me with clues about a beautiful, wealthy young woman, which I was supposed to photographically investigate immediately, as she was about to return to Crete -for some nefarious business, I am sure. It was easy. She was suspicious at first, but then, my ability to open locked doors was the one that had made me famous in my field.
Read MoreMy giant goes with me wherever I go...
My new subject had just returned from Tanzania. While I was photographically investigating her, listening with great interest her accounts about the place and the people, Ralph Waldo Emerson came to my mind and something he wrote in his book “Self reliance”, which I recognised as an undeniable truth.
Read MoreSummer monochrome
I was photographically investigating a fellow photographic investigator who was cursed with betrayal in her relationships and she always had monochrome summers. It was a repeating theme -karmic, according to her- to which she had resigned a long time ago. She was very rich but by then she knew not to show her wealth to people whom she suspected not to be sincere. This summer her life was full of them, as always. But she was blessed with a faithful helper, a mysterious creature who cared for her and always revealed to her what she couldn’t see. So I followed her to her summer retreat, a mysterious, minimal, monochrome dimension in the greek islands, where she went to be invisible. And she was.
Read MoreCats
My two faithful helpers, Juanita and Lupe are cats. When my assignments demand that I travel to another place or another dimension, they obviously cannot be with me - there are so many things that they have to take care at our own base. But they always give me a specific assignment that includes photographic investigations of the cat populations of every new place or dimension in order to find more cat individuals that would possibly alleviate some of their work load. Lately Juanita and Lupe complain that they work too hard and they claim that they deserve their own helpers. A photographic investigator is nothing without her faithful helpers. So their wish is my command.
Read MoreGod's magnificent light
My next assignment came with the mail. Handwritten, with a beautiful calligraphy in an old piece of paper was the following quote from Florence Scovel Shinn’s book “The Game of Life and how to Play it”: The white light of Divine Love flows through me and around me, inspiring and protecting me. The light of Divine Love now dissolves and dissipates every negative condition in my mind, body and affairs. Every cell of my body is filled with the light of Divine Love”. I instantly knew where to go and what to do. i didn’t even have to pack a suitcase…
Read MoreFerry me away
My new assignment was to photographically investigate the lead actor of a movie that was been filmed on a greek ferry boat. I had 6 hours to find him and capture him -with my lens, of course… He was elusive, but when an experienced photographic investigator is presented with a similar situation, she just shoots silhouette. There were no instructions for the contrary, so everyone was happy.
Read MoreDrink the wild air
“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air” wrote Emerson and this quote was my clue for finding my new subject. My mysterious employers love to be… mysterious, so I received this quote written in a piece a paper that was attached to the collar of an abandoned cat that knew how to find me. I was immediately intrigued because I have always been inspired by Emerson’s words. Living in the sunshine of divine love that flows trough us and around us, swimming the sea of human emotions, drinking the wild air of inspiration, pure Spirit.
Read MoreThe influencer
Some subjects never cease to be subjects of a photographic investigation. It is not in their nature. He was elusive to me for four long years. In the past he was known as “Julian” or “The Mexican” and he was the protagonist of some very interesting assignments of mine. My sources informed me that presently he was going by the name “The influencer”. A photographic investigator never says goodbye to her subjects no matter how many alter egos they have -and she investigates them until she is called to another photographically investigating dimension.
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