street portraits

Present, untitled

Present, untitled

Sometimes a photographic investigation takes place in the past but becomes what it is in the present. Which, of course, is all there is. In this case, the present was dominated by frustration and an urgent and desperate need for escape, which of course was a helpless situation - every form of restriction is an illusion and how can you escape an illusion that you have created? Especially when it contains horrific memories of the past and the fear that it is repeating itself… It’s a vicious circle really. In that context, trying to figure out what this photographic investigation was all about, I started browsing “The wisdom of insecurity” by Alan Watts. And the following passage made me stop. And all the desperation and need to escape just collapsed into their native nothingness: “…as a matter of fact, you cannot compare this present experience with a past experience. You can only compare it with a memory of the past, which is a part of the present experience. When you see clearly that memory is a form of present experience, it will be obvious that trying to separate yourself from this experience is as impossible as trying to make your teeth bite themselves. […]To understand this is to realize that life is entirely momentary, that there is neither permanence nor security, and that there is no “I” which can be protected”.

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The Bermuda triangles

The Bermuda triangles

While the original Bermuda triangle was an almost forgotten memory due to the fact that the phenomena that were widely experienced in this part of the Atlantic had come to an abrupt end thanks to the removal from the seabed of the Atlantean crystal that was causing them, many smaller ones were formed almost simultaneously. They started to move freely, bending space and time, serving only as clues or landmarks for photographic investigators. Some of us have quantum triangle detectors that can localise them in case that they are connected with some important photographic investigation, like this one.

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Stay and play? (part I)

Stay and play? (part I)

In almost half of my photographic investigations my subjects have to be hunted down, trapped or deceived even, in order to reveal the secret that my mysterious employers hire me to unveil. And as you know, most of the times that secret is unknown to me and I have to work following clues and hints. So, every assignment is in a way, the shooting of a film noir, following an improvised scenario that me and my subjects write and direct on the spot. But in the great majority of the cases the subjects are clearly in a “fight or flight” mode, so there is action and suspense as I try to “convince” them -with great subtlety, of course- to get into a “stay and play” mode. This photographic investigation was different though, in more than one ways. The one you are allowed to know is that this subject was a chameleon -as you will see in my following posts- , she knew I was investigating her and she had no fear. her natural state was already :stay and play”. Undoubtedly, a challenge for a photographic investigator like me… But them, I can handle anything…

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Something new, something wonderful

Something new, something wonderful

Prentice 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…

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Jamaica

Jamaica

It 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.

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The Crystal Ball

The Crystal Ball

Photographic Investigators love to watch old black and white films and thats what I was doing just before i re-investigated a photographic investigation that took place 5 years ago in Burano. My assignment then was the mysterious Jackie O’Can -you might remember her from previous blog posts- and after watching “The Crystal Ball”, a 1943 movie, I was inspired to look for more clues in this investigation. And I found them.

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The Woman in the Silk Mask

The Woman in the Silk Mask

She was hiding behind a COVID silk mask that she wore -allegedly- to protect others from her lethal breath. My job was to photographically investigate her with the mask and I must admit that this was one of the most surreal assignments that had been given to me by my mysterious employers. It was a challenge. But I am an inter-dimensional photographic investigator and I tend to laugh in the face of challenge…

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Revelations by circumstance

Revelations by circumstance

A 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.“

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Where is The Doctor?

Where is The Doctor?

That 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…

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Unmoved by appearances

Unmoved by appearances

A photographic investigation very often looks like hunting or following appearances, the illusory world that we live in, but in reality is about standing still. A very powerful affirmation (by Florence Scovel Shinn) that I always use in the face of apparent adversity in my photographic investigations is: “I am unmoved by appearances, therefore appearances move”. And they always do.

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Wellness

Wellness

Emmet Fox said: “You are not happy because you are well. You are well because you are happy. You are not depressed because trouble has come to you, but trouble has come to you because you are depressed. You can change your thoughts and feelings, and then the outer things will come to correspond, and indeed there is no other way of working”. A photographic investigator’s job consists, partly, in proving, photographically, the truth of what she believes in. Like the quote from Emmet Fox, mentioned above.

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