A good year to achieve photographic investigation goals and to investigate interesting, mysterious people... But this is also a year that a photographic investigator like me, who is born under the sign of the Rooster, is supposed to wear always something red -with the option of red underwear that someone gave her as a present- to avoid bad luck. What can I say... I don't like to wear red, so it must be the underwear option. Life was unbelievably much easier when I thought that this would be my lucky year. Now I must ask someone to give me my birthday present in advance. Red underwear...
Predictions show that 2017 will be exciting and unpredictable in a good way, kinda like a new dance with no registered steps. With strong elements of instant decisions, faith in one's partner (or partners) and free will which will allow us to choose or create the steps, along the way. But, like any new dance, it will need space, otherwise things may be broken and the dancers may get hurt by an unfortunate placement of furniture... So, I guess, let's dance and see what happens...
She was working on a top secret "James Bond" style kind of tracking device that could be attached to a cigarette... Her code name was "The Golden Girl" because she loved James Bond movies and in her leisure time she liked to experiment with golden paint -that explained the fact that all the furniture in her house were painted gold and her shoes always left a golden trace wherever she went. I would like to tell her that she should probably adopt a lower profile -maybe a silver one- while she was working as a spy, but my job was to track and photographically investigate her. Golden vibrations are very powerful, I thought, so she wasn't without protection...
Many times a photographic investigator thinks of her investigations and her subjects as dancers in a musical or participants in a mystical party... And the question arises: In case the DJ puts the Age of Love on, would it be the Jam & Spoon or the Stella remix? One more great puzzle awaits for an answer.
In between investigations, listening to the Xanadu soundtrack and drinking black coffee, dreaming of Christmas magic, miracles, abundance of all good things and seeing guardian angels shining their sparkle all around me... But most of all, being grateful... Someone should seriously think about introducing Thanksgiving instead of Black Friday in our little place of the world. My photographic investigations are certainly more fruitful around subjects that are thankful as opposed to subjects that are fighting in order to buy very cheap things...
She was named after the infamous Mali tribe and she frequented a bar named Sirius... And I don't believe in coincidences... It goes without saying that she was a woman of mystery and many hidden talents. My assignment was to follow, befriend and photographically investigate her in order to discover clues about a hidden treasure. Was it hers, was it a legacy, was it mystical, ancient or stolen? I was dying to find out because since my first investigative steps, as a child, I was always looking for treasures. And although I would be very well satisfied with gold or diamonds, I suspected from the start that it was about something else, much more precious, much more subtle. I got to work fast, because I was promised a 25% cut on that treasure. The investigation is still ongoing.
That was my only clue. For some reason, the day this phrase came written in a piece of paper inside an envelope in my poste restante in Switzerland, all I could get myself to do was to photographically investigate this girl... Intuition is one of the most useful tools of a photographic investigator, so instead of forcing myself in an aimless search, I ordered another coffee and investigated her even more. She was discussing a mysterious phenomenon that was occurring every time that she entered a specific building, a glass tower in the outskirts of Geneva... There was a decadent "texture" or "colour" in the way she described the building and the people in it -and the fact that the second she was stepping inside it, a terrible headache was attacking her. Her friends stressed all the possible theories that could explain the phenomenon, from the electromagnetic fields energy to some peoples bad vibes... but she knew (and I knew as well) that there was something else going on... Of course all the symptoms disappeared the moment she entered her house, a small castle-like building that her father had build especially for her. It was called "The Angel's Cave"... There was much more to be investigated there, so I committed myself to solve The Glass Tower Mystery -and for that reason I cancelled my trip to Venice, where Mister Minimal and the other members of his infamous -to a selected few of course- secret society were waiting for me... TO BE CONTINUED...
Astrology for coffee is like sympathy for tea... a perfect match that doesn't exclude the presence of an occasional cigarette which promotes a deeper understanding of the planetary movements. Besides, investigating an astrology reader is always more fun over coffee. My assignment was to investigate the moment of realisation that the prediction were correct, and I think it went pretty well...
My intention was to fool my employers that this investigation had taken place at night somewhere in Giudecca, in Venice... My subject, a woman of mystery, didn't give me any trouble, it was almost as if we had planned a photo shooting... Truffaut's film gave me the idea for the deception but I couldn't go through with it... Underexposing an underexposed situation seemed to me ironic and pointless... It wouldn't be the first time that an investigation would take a different twist... I decided to follow that one to see where it goes...
Mister Minimal had a whole chapter for himself in my photographic investigations' book... Elusive, mysterious, a published photographer, very rich and very loved, he was called by many "The King of Venice". He was also one of my favourite subjects and a very lucky man. Let's face it: being investigates 3-4 times a year by a photographic investigator as myself is a rare thing! Mister Minimal always knows when he is being investigated but never shows it. That's one of the things that make him a great subject. As well as the fact that he likes to walk ahead of everybody, preferably in empty narrow streets, so his minimalism is easy to capture. Mister Minimal's photographic style is a projection of his true self. Beautiful minimal black and white empty spaces that suggest a welcoming heart, an unprejudiced mind and an openness of spirit. And although my sources tell me that from time to time he is letting the troubles of his earthly existence carry him in the crowded frames of worry and fear, I can always see him walking the sunlit path of great, pure, yet elusive, minimalism...
I was investigating a telenovela producer who had an unusual vision: create a telenovela without intrigues, without passions and lies and without suspense. He had decided that her series would be about loving friends and their encounters at work, having coffee, smoking, talking about their cats and writing philosophy articles... No desperate love affairs, no cheating, no crimes... All I had to do was follow the actors. The name of the telenovela would be "Amigas" and these shots are from the coffee breaks... And they were many...
Time travel leaves traces and disturbances in the universe - every time traveller, Doctor Who fan and intergalactic photographic investigator knows it. This is why you cannot travel in time too much too soon, because of the imminent danger that this universe -and maybe others- will implode... That is why caution is needed. I was trained to investigate people who leave time travel traces and this is my latest investigation on this subject...
"It's not what you are looking at that matters, it's what you see" said David Henry Thoreau (I think he said it that way...) and I found myself agreeing with him every day. Especially while I was investigating a fellow photographic investigator who pretended to be an astrologer in order to investigate a spy who was posing as an astrology review publisher. She had an magazine editorial background so she knew her way into a publishing company. From the first moment her view (as well as her photographic evidence) was clouded by her past experiences working in magazines (which were very intense in a good and in a bad way). Are we really capable to look with eyes wide open what lies before us and see it clearly, without the cloud of prejudice, without fear of the repetition of past experiences and with good faith that we can deal with it, whatever it is, if we confront it with love? I was doing that with more or less success since I became a photographic investigator... Would I be able to do it if I were in her position, and had to go back to my old profession? I don't know... These are some of the questions that this investigation awakened in me... Will they ever be answered? As I was coming back home after my investigation yesterday, I "saw" me (or anyone else) in an old age, a little before dying, having all the answers I could get in that lifetime, talking to my younger self... "All that worrying was totally unnecessary, you know?..." I guess we all know that on a deeper level... To apply it in everyday life is the challenge.
Sometimes everything flows. Unobstructed, smoothly like a warm August breeze that fills a house with all the windows open. Like a friendly presence caressing you, like a friendly fairy that makes the wind chimes sing. Investigating these subjects brought that sensation to my mind, which I very often feel in my home. Just flow.
Secret meetings very often take place in museums and that's why those are ideal places to meet photographic investigators like me... This time it was the Acropolis Museum in Athens and it was me who was being stalked... And I am saying "stalked" because to be investigated demands a lot more skills than the guy who was following me possessed. Stalkers and wannabe "investigators" of photographic investigators make me feel sorry for them... a feeling of decadence fills my heart and instead of running away, I indulge them. I could never see as an equal a person who would want to investigate me... so I let them have what they want, knowing they will get nothing in the end. In that context, I was wandering in this beautiful museum of minimalistic architecture and I didn't mind at all pretending to be a tourist.... it was a hot noon in Athens and inside it was wonderfully cool.
And the living is easy... The leaving from Athens as well... I wasn't really investigating... Just enjoying that magical dreamy atmosphere, very characteristic of August... People getting ready for their summer vacation, other just coming back and others just dropping by before their next destination... Exchange of dreams, show of tan lines, friendly massages, bronzed legs, laughter, anticipation, the hope of the best holiday ever, impossible mathematic calculations in order to make money last... Just the old plain summer magic...
I was hired again to investigate another strange group. After the love exhaling people of Santa Fe, now I had to follow the activities of a beauty measuring group in Denmark... There was nothing to it, really, all I had to do was to take shots of the beauty and of some of the people who were trying to measure it. I don't now if they succeeded, because they say it's not an easy task, but I was very satisfied with my work, which was the documentation of the process. And of the pure beauty, of course...
She was a pilot and she had her own plane. She was a kind of a spy, like I am, but she liked to call herself an "aerial explorer" -the way I like to call myself a "photographic investigator". So there was a connection there... but I had to investigate her anyway. She undertook very special -and highly secretive- missions, flying mostly over North America. And that's when "the incident" happened... They call it "the incident" because nobody knows exactly what happened, but everybody knows that it had something to do with flying too high over Brooklyn in one of her missions. That's when her plane had a mysterious loss of power -it functioned with a special (and unknown) kind of drive- which forced her to make an emergency landing in Anchorage, Alaska. I met her on a greek island, 6 months after "the incident". I was to find out what the incident was and was she was doing in Greece. But all you have to do is look at my photographic investigation shots...
