Photographing time

How to capture time with/in a shot? Doing something like this! Ask Philip Zuan.

The biggest problem

"I understand the passion for a life that is made, not bought."

Peggy Orenstein (The Femivore)

Brigitte Bardot

* * *

I take it that the biggest problem of our generation regarding relationships is to understand the wishes and necessities of girls, who want and deserve to have a life and a work. But somehow, our parents didn't teach us to deal with that, either to their sons nor to their daughters.

And although everybody might agree upon this basic considerations, it is still a problem in daily life. A matter of priorities: career, family. And a matter of needs: work, partnership. And a matter of limits: money, time, geographical location.

Try to deal with that! As I see it, this situation was unknown for the previous generations.

Leído en un parque de San Ángel

"Vale más la gracia de la imperfección que la perfección sin gracia"

Biolay!

Benjamin Biolay got probably bored of Chiara Mastroiani after some time living together, and they broke up. Some days ago, it is rumored, Biolay kicked Sarko's ass, and Carla Bruni moved to his place. Thi guy, Biolay, seems to me to be the most powerful French alive. A pity, though, that his tunes are becoming so mainstream: go to Galerie Kaufhof and you'll listen his songs on the loudspeakers. Now, he got Carla next to him...

So the plan seems to make a Biolay-tour-de-force and kick Marc Sánchez' ass (HR) or, at least, Andy Rodick's (BD)...

Some anonymous girl, Hilary Rhoda, Brooklyn Decker

"La dicha", de J.L. Borges

El que abraza a una mujer es Adán. La mujer es Eva.
Todo sucede por primera vez.

[…]

Nada hay tan antiguo bajo el sol.
Todo sucede por primera vez, pero de un modo eterno.
El que lee mis palabras está inventándolas.

Foto: Hilary Rhoda

Viena :: "En busca del tercer hombre"

Hace un año, más o menos, publiqué una nota sobre Viena en "La Tempestad". Apenas ahora me resulta posible presentar el texto aquí.

Foto: Gasómetro

The sad flea market

I spent the weekend offline, trying to minimize my use of the computer. So I decided to go to the flea market, a 15 minute walk from home. I saw sad faces...

Selfportrait à la Toscana

Little red mail plane

Geoffrey Firmin: "Sometimes, when I see the little red mail plane fly in from Acapulco at seven in the morning over the strange hills, or more probably hear... I think that you will be on it, on that plane every morning as it goes by, and will have come to save me. Then the morning goes by and you have not come. But oh, I pray for this now, that you will come [...] come back to me, Yvonne, if only for a day [...]"

Malcolm Lowry, Under the volcano

As life goes by

Según Aristóteles, medimos el movimiento con el tiempo. A mí me parece que para medir la vida inventaron las tesis doctorales. Uno se sienta, comienza a escribir, y cuando cree ya haber terminado le piden que corrija, que quite, que agregue, que mengüe una opinión, que robustezca un argumento. El cuento de nunca acabar. Una tesis doctoral es como Facebook: nos hace creer que la vida está ahí, encerrada, que es una cajita llena de sorpresas, pero en realidad es la caja de Pandora. La vida está afuera.

Y como testigos de esto tengo a mis vecinas de enfrente. Todos los días traen a sus niños a uno de los muchos locales pintorescos de esta calle: un Kindercafé. Los niños juegan mientras las mamás se sientan afuera a charlar, beber café, fumar y mirarme disimuladamente por la ventana. Mi mirada pasa por encima de la nieve del balcón y se concentra en los cigarrillos, en la cabellera color Lola rennt, y mientras trabajo en lo que creo firmemente y espero que sea la última versión de mi tesis, imagino sus conversaciones. Son alemanas, seguramente no hablan de mí. Me intriga saber de qué hablan durante tantas horas tantos días, tanto o más cuanto les intrigará saber qué carajos hace el tipo del edificio de enfrente tantos días y tantos meses en su escritorio, bien protegido de la nieve y el frío.

La vida está afuera, está en una cabellera de fuego, en la lumbre de un cigarrillo, en el humo del café, en el ardor de las palabras que junto con un timidísimo sol septentrional comienza a derretir la nieve devenida en acero de hielo.

La otra vecina, la güerita llena de rastras, cara bonita, entra y sale del número 28. Otro vecino no puede sacar su coche porque las llantas se patinan en el hielo, y el nietecito no tiene fuerza suficiente para empujar el coche. Pasa alguien, deja las bolsas del mercado sobre el suelo y se apresta a ayudar. Nada. Se suma otro voluntario. Tampoco. Me dan ganas de bajar, aunque esté metido en mis pantuflas guatemaltecas pero me lo prohibo: la vida está afuera y yo debo terminar una tesis doctoral. Para mi alivio se suma un tercer tipo y en un santiamén desatascan el carro.

Me incomoda el "mouse", trabajo sólo con el "mousepad" de mi laptop. Si la tesis es el cálculo de la vida que a uno se le escapa, las muñecas adoloridas y las yemas descarapeladas de tanto teclear y surcar la pantalla son la medida de la tesis, del hartazgo, del cansancio, de mi extenuación. Pero one sunny day iré a visitar a mis vecinas, me pintaré la melena de blanco, naranja o azul y les preguntaré qué tanto charlan. One sunny day!

Legs: Álvarez Bravo, Erwitt

There is a new book and online essay commissioned by Magnum: Elliot Erwitt's Personal Best. One of the pics has a strong similarity to another one made by Manuel Álvarez Bravo in the Centro Histórico. This one is particularly appealing for me, since the add refers to the business of an uncle of mine (bought by Carlos Slim few years ago, hélas!). I also worked as a teenager for Hubard y Bourlon in order to go to Cuba, but I spent the money rather jumping from an airplane with a parachute.

Erwitt

Álvarez Bravo

Souris-moi, Jean!

Ah, last night saw again the cute and gorgeous Jean Seberg smiling on the screen. Yes, it is Brrrrrlinale here in -3º Berlin, but it is always worth to see "A bout de souffle", specially on the big screen.

Sea work: La Quebrada, Lamalera

Divers entertain tourists by jumping off the 45 meter (148 ft) high cliff. The divers must calculate the right moment to jump to catch an incoming wave and avoid serious injury or death. Acapulco, Mexico.


Lamelera 's whalers hunting the whale shark (the biggest fish in the ocean). Lembata island. West of Nusa Tengarra islands. Indonesia. Foto by Jean Robert.

"The Information", by Martin Amis

"Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that... Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and your sob probes, and you would mark them. Women -- and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses -- will wake and turn to these men and ask, with females need-to-know. 'What is it?' And the men say, 'Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.'

Just sad dreams. Yeah: oh sure. Just sad dreams. Or something like that.

Richard Tull was crying in his sleep. The woman beside him, his wife, Gina, woke and turned. She moved up on him from behind and laid hands on his pale and straining shoulders. There was a professionalism in her blinks and frowns and whispers: like the person at the poolside, trained in first aid; like the figure surging in on the blood-smeared macadam, a striding Christ of mouth-to-mouth. She was a woman. She knew so much more about tears than he did. She didn't know about Swift's juvenilia, or Wordsworth's senilia, or how Cressida had variously fared at the hands of Boccaccio, of Chaucer, of Robert Henryson, of Shakespeare; she didn't know Proust. But she knew tears. Gina had tears cold. [...]"

First lines of "The Information" (1995), by Martin Amis
Photo: Martin Amis. © Angela Gorgas (1979)

Los oryx de Parker

"Parker no había muerto al día siguiente, septiembre 16, pero estaba muy dolorido. Ya no lo calmaba la morfina; no podía comer ni beber. Nos costó acomodarlo en la parte de atrás del camión. La bala, que lo atravesó de un lado a otro, le había destrozado el estómago. Afortunadamente el camino era bastante liso, de modo que el ajetreo del camión no era intolerable.

Había una luz muy clara y un sol radiante. Estábamos ahora en el desierto, no sin alguna mata o arbusto, pero demasiado lejos del agua, para el hombre y su ganado. Bajo un arbusto vi una enorme hiena, dando vueltas y vueltas, como un perro antes de echarse a dormir; una hora después vi una pareja de oryx. Las pesadas bestias, grandes como novillos, de pelaje blanco como la nieve y grandes cuernos curvos, pastaban en las matas de olor dulzón. Detuvimos el camión para mirarlos, porque ninguno de nosotros habíamos visto nunca animales así, ni volvimos a verlos. Le ayudamos a Parker a incorporarse, para que él los viera también. Nos pareció importante que los viera antes de morir".

Vladimir Peniakoff, fragmento de Popsky's Private Army

Death on the road: Iturbide, De Luigi

Graciela Iturbide, México (1978)

Stefano De Luigi, Kenya (2009)

Fritz Kahn: Auto, Ear

There is an exhibition these days in Berlin: the medical drawings of Fritz Kahn, which are a brilliant explanation of human mechanics. Check his gallery, it's worth a visit.

John Irving dixit

David Miklos posted a superb quote of John Irving's Last Night on Twisted River (2009):

"We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly–as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth–the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives".

Víctor Hugo en La Habana

Me estreno en la revista semanal de Milenio con un artículo titulado "Víctor Hugo en La Habana", escrito a partir de mis experiencias decembrinas en Cuba en la Academia Blogger de Yoani Sánchez. Va con un pilón de Julio Ortega.

Alinka Echeverría, David Liittschwager

How many pilgrims gather in La Villa every 12th of December? In 2008, there were 6 million, two months ago, 6.1 millions. Alinka Echeverría presented in Milano a typography of the pilgrims.

And how many living beings can gather in a cubic foot? David Liittschwager visited different environments, and took thousands of pictures in order to present a typography in National Geographic.

Alinka Echeverría, Six Million Pilgrims

David Liittschwager, One Cubic Foot

INFO ALINKA

LAS AMÉRICAS LATINAS. Las fatigas del querer mostra promossa e organizzata dalla Provincia di Milano in collaborazione con ADAC/Associazione Diffusione Arte Cultura di Modena curata da Philippe Daverio con Elena Agudio e Jean Blanchaert Spazio Oberdan, Viale Vittorio Veneto 2, Milano dal 21 maggio al 4 ottobre 2009.

La mostra LAS AMERICAS LATINAS. Las fatigas del querer infatti, come recita il titolo stesso (“Americhe Latine”), offre un panorama multiplo, diversificato e complesso, come è quello della realtà politica economica sociale e creativa del continente sudamericano. Non un’interpretazione univoca e definitiva, bensì spunti poetici per avvicinarsi alla comprensione di un paese così lontano e così vicino a noi. Una mostra che lascia aperto l’enigma e si limita a fornire una documentazione delle più significative correnti e qualità artistiche.

INFO DAVID

How much life could you find in One Cubic Foot? That's a hunk of ecosystem small enough to fit in your lap. To answer the question, photographer David Liittschwager took a green metal frame, a 12-inch cube, to disparate environments—land and water, tropical and temperate. At each locale he set down the cube and started watching, counting, and photographing with the help of his assistant and many biologists. The goal: to represent the creatures that lived in or moved through that space. The team then sorted through their habitat cubes, coaxing out every inhabitant, down to a size of about a millimeter. Accomplishing that took an average of three weeks at each site. In all, more than a thousand individual organisms were photographed, their diversity represented in this gallery. "It was like finding little gems," Liittschwager says.

Women check women

Cartier-Bresson, Paris

Sophia Loren peering at Jayne Mansfield, Beverly Hills

On silence

There are a couple of images in Florence which I have seen concerning silence. This one, for instance, is in San Marco, painted by Fra Angelico.

Last week, a new scandal in a Catholic school: the famous Jesuit school for VI (very intelligent) students, Kanisius. Two Jesuits abused sexually some kids in the late 70's and early 80's. One of them accepted it, long time ago, the other one denies it. Both left the Compañía in the 90's.

The most interesting here is the attitude of the director of the school. He says that he deplores completely the silence, which fuels the badness of the criminals. And deplores the lack of support from the Church, except from the Berlin Bishop. Allegedly he has been trying to break the silence for many years, till he finally succeeded. He prefers to listen. (I don't know him, but at least his attitude in this interview is quite different to what I have seen before. Maybe he is just another liar, who knows...)

Fr. Mertes listening

I cannot help myself thinking of the absurd Legionarios de Cristo and they defense attitude: "God is testing us", "they are lying", whatever bullshit they have been saying for years. Have a look on the "News" site, nothing but cheerful smiles.

But of course, there is no Pater Mertes in the wealthy Mexican Catholicism, where secrecy is such a big value.

Maciel and some kids

Fotos: St. Thomas martyr / Timur Emek / ?

iPad, Eye Pad

A(n accoustic) sosias suggested the other day by FAZ-front page...

Rafael, Anne

Rafael, Selfportrait (ca. 1506)

Frank Horvat, Anne

Frank Horvat worked between 1983 and 1988 for the German FAZ. He developed the project "Vrais semblances" (1980-1986), to which "Anne" belongs: a series of portraits mimicking painted portraits. It is worth having a look to the project, since it is not only about "mimicking".

Doktor erroris causa

Vor gut einem Monat bekam ich eine Einladung vom Goethe Institut, um einen Aufsatz über etwas "typisches Deutsch" zu verfassen. Mein Text geht um den Titelkult. "Doktor erroris causa" ist hier zu finden. Geniesst es!