portrait
...I must say I always have loved the "liberation point". The moment when the illusion collapses. Not only because it gives equally good investigative portraits, but because it's most promising: who knows? If one illusion collapses today, maybe another one, more important will collapse tomorrow. Something to meditate on…
Read MoreMy 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 MoreMy 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 MoreI 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 new subject was powerful. She had the ability to transform herself into anything she wished to -organic or inorganic- and she could also transform others. Her power had it’s source in the unshakable conviction that as a daughter of a powerful king she could have all of her wishes fulfilled. And she had a preference in the art of transformation… A photographic investigator must be careful in situations like this one, where a wrong look or word could transform them into a cucumber or an umbrella… So I walked carefully into my new assignment, being alert and ready at any time to push the button of my inter-dimensional wrist watch.
Read MoreSome 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.
Read MoreA photographic investigator knows that there is no point in “fighting” the darkness. All one has to do is turn on the light. Keep it simple.
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 MoreMy new subject was working in the Old Curiosity Coffee Shop and I should know what clues to look for, except… I never got to read Dickens’ book -I had it in my library though! So I knew that the environment, though very pleasant, wouldn’t help me to complete the photographic investigation. She was known as the “Cat Mistress” because she loved and protected cats -and she was equally loved and protected by them. Her totem animal was the Caracal, a beautiful wild cat species that could jump 3 meters in the air and catch birds! My totem is the black bird and we could obviously have a conflict of interests there, but what helped me approach her was the recent appearance of the jaguar as my spirit animal -a sort of special, temporary messenger. This way, the necessary compatibility was achieved and my photographic investigation started.
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 MoreFar far away is an invention of the mind. Because, in reality there is no “there”, there is only “here”. Likewise, there no “then”, there is only “now”.
Read MoreA photographic investigator does is not engaged all the time in traveling between dimensions or through time… She has mundane tasks to fulfil, just like any other “non photographic investigator” being. In that case I was reviewing a photographic investigation that took place some days before while I was steaming some organic broccoli and potatoes for my mother, listening at the same time an audiobook by Emily Cady, where telepathy was mentioned. My subject was a secret agent from a different time-space (I had investigated her so many times before but she always managed to surprise me). My conclusion (which came as an epiphany) after many investigations I did on her, was that surrealism and lack of coherence seemed to slow her down, giving me more time to photographically investigate her before she disappeared. Thus the title .
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 MoreWhen my career as a photographic investigator started, i didn’t know it did. It was night time, I was in a bar and I was shooting casual portraits of Dorian K., a man that in the 1st of May of that year saved my life. Now that I think about it, maybe I was shooting him to show him that he did the right move saving me, although he didn’t have a choice - it was a compulsive move. This man proved to be an angel, a messenger on behalf of my mysterious “employers” that from that day on, started giving me mysterious assignments about people and places that needed to be photographically investigated, which I had to discover by myself, following cryptic leads and clues. (Up to this day, I haven’t discovered the identity of my mysterious employers but I loved each and every one of my assignments). The first clues were given to me that night by Dorian K. and at the same time my first photographic investigation was completed.
Read MoreA photographic investigator knows that her subjects have been instructed, early in their life, to start constructing a story about themselves -enriched over the years with bits of experience, failures, successes, oppressed feelings and desires- and then believe it to be true. So naturally they get trapped in that story, rarely managing to escape it’s limitations. But she also knows that in a twinkling of the eye this truth can be realised and the subjects can write a different story, preferably one of harmony, radiance, health, wealth, love and perfect self expression. A happy story.
Read MoreI photographically investigated Vera and her noir world after watching a great television version of Agatha Christie’s “A murder is announced”. This could have been the name of the investigation as the whole atmosphere was overflowed with a sense of secret, of something hidden. Well hidden, in Vera’s case.
Read More“But everything exposed by the light becomes visible--and everything that is illuminated becomes a light”. Ephesians, 5:13. (Sometimes a photographic investigator has nothing to say).
Read MoreA photographic investigator often starts her day seeking inspiration and today was a Florence Scovel Shinn day. The quote that stuck to mind was the following: “The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.” Something to think about…
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 MoreSince I had to leave the Caribbean to photographically investigate the Lina Ivers case (see previous blog post) I thought that I might as well take care of another assignment, about Vappulin, a new vibrational method that has the ability to help you re-magnetise -in case you have been de-magnetised- all the wonderful things that belong rightfully to you. it is so easy, most people find it impossible to practise. It works differently for everyone, in the sense that everyone has to find their own affirmation that “clicks” , energising in that way the magnetising vibration. My subject used the following: “I am harmonious, happy, healthy and radiant, free from the tyranny of fear. My happiness is built upon a rock”. She said it had miraculous results.
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