This is a question unanswered. And it will remain that way, if I have anything to say about it. I was asked to follow and photograph her… I didn't ask why, this was just one of these cases… You know what I mean… the money was so good, there was no time for questions… And also, because I thought it would spoil my fun to know about it beforehand. It would be very easy to say that she was just a mad woman visiting again and again an abandoned hospital in Venice. It sure would be an easy assumption. But as I was watching her, day after day, I felt drawn to her, to her energy and personality. Being crazy was just too easy, too simple… In my mind she was an alien actor, a person from another world, stranded here, for unknown reasons. The only way to connect to her home was to perform again and a again a mysterious ritual - the movements and their significance where known only to her. I saw her move silently, harmonically, smoothly, gracefully in her mysterious, strange "dance", in a surreal but mesmerising choreography. And I stopped thinking. I stopped wondering, as well. All I did was hope, wholeheartedly, that she'd get back home, soon.
Read More"Juno, the latin version of the greek goddess Hera, rules the month of June, and being the goddess of domesticity, makes June the most auspicious month for weddings". I read that in an old datebook that was sitting on my desk. I like browsing in old datebooks (both for inspiration and perspective) and that's what I was doing. It was a Llewellyn's Witches' Datebook of 2010. I always resented writing a journal, all my thoughts and feelings seemed always funny and ridiculous when I read them later on. So, no. What I liked to do was noting "headlines" about the day (some days, anyway). Like, "Today extraterrestrial weather, dust from the desert makes Athens look like Mars" or "I love him" or "Announcement: I am the new editor in chief"... Things like that. I "accidentally" opened it in a July page and since there was no headline in that page and it was the middle of June, I went back a little and saw the Juno entry. A very dear friend and beloved model of mine got married a few days ago and I knew she was protected and blessed. I love June. It's the month you can have a glimpse of the goddess Juno strolling around in a garden, or sitting on a bench, relaxing. Earthy and divine, at the same time. No doubt about it: "I love June" - this could be a new headline, by the way.
Read MoreWhat can really be the end of a photographic investigator is not travelling in space, but travelling in time. And I've done that a lot... For some unexplained and probably mystical (or totally meaningless) reason, every time I had to travel in time I was going back to Venice. So, my energy resources were every time smaller, although my ticket was getting cheaper and cheaper. It felt like a countdown. "Al fin, que para morir nacimos" as they say in Mexico... "In the end, we are born to die". Who knows? Maybe the end of my photographic investigations would come in the middle, inside the time vortex, outside of time. I wonder if all my work would disappear with me too. It should, I think.
Read MoreMy subject had all the makes of Billy Wilder 1944 film's femme fatale... Better even than Barbara Stanwyck, in my photographic investigator's opinion.. "How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle?" wondered Walter Neff in the film... Maybe my subject's partner did too, but to me he looked like he hadn't seen the film... Maybe I was wrong, who knows?
Read MoreThis is a question unanswered. And it will remain that way, if I have anything to say about it. I was asked to follow and photograph her… I didn't ask why, this was just one of these cases… You know what I mean… the money was so good, there was no time for questions… And also, because I thought it would spoil my fun to know about it beforehand. It would be very easy to say that she was just a mad woman visiting again and again an abandoned hospital in Venice. It sure would be an easy assumption. But as I was watching her, day after day, I felt drawn to her, to her energy and personality. Being crazy was just too easy, too simple… In my mind she was an alien actor, a person from another world, stranded here, for unknown reasons. The only way to connect to her home was to perform again and a again a mysterious ritual - the movements and their significance where known only to her. I saw her move silently, harmonically, smoothly, gracefully in her mysterious, strange "dance", in a surreal but mesmerising choreography. And I stopped thinking. I stopped wondering, as well. All I did was hope, wholeheartedly, that she'd get back home, soon.
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