Pictures from the city
I went to see Maria yesterday, she being back in town for a few days. Beautiful Maria, long hours are being cruel on her, her multiple appointments and her busy agenda being almost as if she were a famed world class athlete. She is, tough.
At any rate, at last I was able to see her pictures, her visual sensibility and the ability to capture people and time.
What should I say, am biased, but those pictures I saw were beautiful; not going on extremes, since it is obvious that technique has yet to be mastered, as in any other skill, but the perception, the ability to capture a story unfolding, and then give it back to us, unsuspecting bystanders, that was magic. Her pictures are not so much about visual aesthetics, although that is clearly basic there, but that emotion that travels from her to the spectator.
There is, for example, the three old ladies, sitting on a stone fountain, resting after shopping at the local market, waiting for the guagua. Her faces are clear, alert eyes, not yet defeated by time, much more together after a long walk. Or a couple after church, she, with a serious face, listening while playing with her shoes, he, older and graying, explaining some fine point, or giving advice. Father and daughter? Priest and parishioner? Alone in that moment, this kid playing on the beach, the sun setting, and the eyes lost in the vastness of the sea, waiting, listening, wondering.
In a twist of the old tale, it is her soul the one being captured in those pictures, and then placed out there to be seen.