Truthful Fictions
There are three lines drawn in the sand. The wind blows, the lines scatter in the wind. Nature observes the fragile agreement. What will time remember? Maybe the transience of time and space.
“Will the wind remember
The names it has blown in the past?” — Jimi Hendrix
I merely urged my camera to explore the celluloid possibilities. I needed the adventure. I needed to cross boundaries in time and space. I needed to know what might be seen if I ventured across the dare. There is a purpose I imagine every day. If I cross over the line, a new discovery will be ahead.
I saw the great cannon in Jacques Offenbach’s operetta, “A Trip to the Moon,” an adaptation of Jules Verne’s “From Earth to the Moon”. In one morning witnessed nature’s ethereally hallucinogenic stark skyline, a whiteness of naked swans caressing Earth’s contours. I stood with photographer Edward Curtis and director John Ford. The movie, The Searchers, played in my mind. John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards crossed the open plains of Monument Valley.
I spun the ideas, as if they were in my mind, multicolored crinkled cellophane. I rotated my eyes, raised multiple cameras, and fired a single shutter speed as if into a Rubik’s Cube of all three imagined stories. I know the visual highlights were inviting me to seek what the other side had to offer. The necessary beauty of living.
Fernando Botero, the Colombian artist, posed for me. The first time, he was like my Melville’s whale. There was always a whale of particular proportions in my scopes. I have met Botero in five or seven cities. In each city, he greeted me as if I was the most important person in the room. When he extended his hand in friendship, I easily in mind recalled his friendship with Willem de Kooning: Botero described that moment as two artists from separate worlds with one idea in common. Art.
The success he built was celebrated by many. The man, the artist in my presence, never walked with airs. It was his pleasure to take me by the hand. In my imagined pirouette, he asked me how I like what I see, how do I see his art.
It is impossible to define why my experience in one city was more entertaining than another. If I had to make a difficult choice, I would say the Italian city Pietrasanta would be the winner.
Before I photographed his portrait, he invited me for a drive. He picked me up at my hotel and with not a word from me, he wholeheartedly shared how happy he was to be in the car not touring but with two people along for a ride from the small charm of one city to what I would consider the grand stories from Carrara, Italy: The days of Michelangelo and the reminiscing of “The David” and more.
