Mooseeyes
Do you see?
Maybe a Buddha
OK, I might be exaggerating. But some kind of a guru?
There it was laying, the dog, across the sidewalk in the corner by the cathedral of Santiago. In the very stream of pedestrians. I took a photo of it and spoke to it in a loud voice: Isn´t that some way, you have no shame at all and so on.
Then another voice started to follow me. By the cathedral´s northern wall there is always a lot of people sitting on a bench, and in this case a young boy sitting there started to vary the theme I had brought up. About shame. No, the dog doesn´t have any, he said, it´s free from it. And he told me how he, conversely, had too much of it and had been fighting for years to overcome it; earlier he had hardly dared to go to the kiosk even, though he was doing better now. Well, about that and other stuff. About his whole life that his been rather tough. We spoked for some 45 minutes I would say. “Comparing our bunions”, as the Swedish poet Werner Aspenström once called it.
The dog didn´t move.
It might have been a reincarnation of Buddha. It doesn´t have to have been one. /Mooseeyes
Whatever you say
Chillán, Chile, May 24 2012
Lazy days on the blog ultimately. I´m focused on a journey I hope to begin soon and a little – extremely! – tired of the city I´ve been living in since 2004. I don´t find the motivation to go out portraying it right here and now. But soon, as soon as I get away, I hope… Then! Meanwhile you will have to put up with a religious shouter and stuff like that.
I find the dogs´attitude admirable; they surely have something to teach me. /Mooseeyes
Leather jacket
Santiago de Chile, May 17 2012
With this beautiful woman I was interacting for maybe three or five seconds. I had been watching her for a while, and then all of a sudden I got the opportunity to portrait her with my camera. Then the train got into a station, the one were I had to get off. When I now look at the picture it´s like seeing an old friend, with whom I share both values and other stuff. She wore a leather jacket and had a kind of masculine energy. A gal with an attitude she seemed to be; serious throughout the journey. But when I challenged her with my camera, she responded quite unexpected with a warm and humorous smile that I maybe could´t trap completely. Nice!
Generally speaking it´s easy to make people smile and laugh in Santiago, I think. Many chileans call their capital by its nickname: “Santiasco”; asco means disgust. That´s because of the stress, the polluted air – which has become a lot cleaner in recent years though -and the social problems. But I like Santiago. If you scratch a little on the surface you´ll find as well humor as warmth beneath it. Here a new Chile is about to get born. That´s my feeling, and my chilean woman who visits the town at least once a month nods her head, agreeing. /Mooseeyes
What shall be
Santiago, Chile, May 15 2012
Plaza de armas - as in most chilean cities the most central point of Santiago. The right place to think about what might be about to be. At one end there is the old cathedral. There, of course, they speculate a good deal about such things, though I think you might cuestion the honesty of those speculations. Aren´t the mostly repeating old theories and dogmas that not many take in serious anymore?
The pentacostals prophesying has a lot more fervor, you must admit. They use to line up at the other end of the square, and then they step forward, grabbing a microphone and start to shout all that they dare. If the conviction, or whatever their fuel might be, lacks one of them, the friends are ready to shout “hallelujah!” in a chorus. Then the one who is shouting at the moment find inspiration to go on a little more, though I suppose there must be a fretting feeling somewhere that it´s sheer madness, what they are doing; to stand their shouting about God; tell me if it isn´t inconsistent; the almighty God needing the help of a loudspeaker to begin with? But try to cuestion them and they will tell you… “Religious freedom”, “freedom of speech” are the word that they have ready at the very tip of there tongues. It means in the pentacostal interpretation that anyone has the rigt to scream as much as he want about his religious belief, and may God forgive those who cuestion it.
Well, I didn´t mean it would be illegal… But in Chile, there is a strong tendency to measure your behavior in legal terms. Whether it´s a heritage from the military years or if it was that way even before, that I don´t know. Bust just common sense isn´t worth very much to many people. As long as it´s legal it´s OK, many argue.
Well, then we have the tarotists, that and ordinary night use to be around ten or maybe twelve. They tell you about your now and future in cards. Sometimes in your palms too. They occupy a lot less space, especially acoustically, and many of them enlighten the nights nicely with candles.
The man on the photo was listening to a pentacostal who had a little show for himself in a hidden corner. I thought his speech completely lacked from consistency or any kind strategy, he seemed to be training himself to sound compelling. Actually complete rubbish, I thought, but the man on the photo seemed to listen to him with other ears. Get prepared to what will be, he said. Next year people will start to have microchips implanted in their forehead, due to an Obama decision, he said. Not many things can surprise me in this world, and so it may be some day? I hope he was wrong. /Mooseeyes
A little encounter
Chillán, Chile, May 11 2012
This time I haven´t much to say, besides what the photo already tells you. I was strolling by the pavement, looking at the girl, she looked at me and I took the photo. Well, maybe that her mother discovered me, and that I showed her the picture on the camera monitor. That she thought it was cute and even said “thank you!”. It happens often her in Chile, that people thanks you after you have portraited them without their knowing. And normally it doesn´t feel lika an empty phrase, but is if they mean it; they are actually grateful. Why, I don´t know. Maybe because you saw them? Anyway it gives you energy to go on taking photos, of course. /Mooseeyes
It´s Mother´s Day today
Chillán, Chile, May 2012
I wonder if she likes what she sees, Mother Mary?
I hope she does. It´s not her fault, I guess, that she has inspired a self-aggrandizing motherhood focused on her, not on the child and it´s real needs. It´s not her fault that parenthood in christianity has been looked upon as a business between her and God, and where the father in essential aspects shouldn´t. Which is, I would say, one of the very roots to the machismo, that is founded on an unhealthy mother´s cult. But that´s a too long story to be told here.
The times they are a-changing. In some aspects to the better. /Mooseeyes
Speaking of the devil
Chillán, Chile, 11 maj 2012
As I said I meat Hugo often. Yesterday, after I´d publiced the post about him I went out for a walk. And who was there, sitting in a doorway, if not Hugo?
Gosh, how fantastic he looked with the wooden door as a background, and the light was good… I had to take some more pics. And you have to admit that he´s handsome, the boy. Or maybe you should say the man. He´s worth another post in the blog.
- Hugo, what exactly do you do?
- Sometimes I buy bread… If somebody gives me money. And sometimes I bring money home to mum and dad.
He lives in Bulnes, I small town some 20 kilometres from Chillán. Gets her every morning by bus, go home the same way. I think.
First he didn´t want to say his how old he was, he got embarressed. Then I met him again, later today, and I asked him again. Then he told me he´s 18. I thought he was older. /Mooseeyes
My most willing model
Chillán, Chile, May 2012
- A photo, a photo! Tío, tío, take a photo, take a photo!
Once I portraited Hugo, and ever since he insists every time we meet in the city. Which happens quite often, as he spends most of his time there. Sometimes I please him, as this time: “Now Im going to rob your soul, Hugo!” He didn´t bother. The parking men with whom he had been chatting just smiled. They know Hugo.
As you can see he calls me “tío”, i.e. uncle. He´s the only grown up man that do that. I haven´t got a clue about his age. Especially not spiritually. Perhaps five? /Mooseeyes
Susana
Chillán, Chile, March 21 2012
Susana. A friend, I would say she is by now. We use to chat a little when we meet in the park.
Here with two of her grandchildren; Nico I think the boy is called and Paloma the little girl.
Almendra, her some years elder grand daughter covers the wall by the headside of my and my woman´s bed. She´s a true beuty, that little girl; four or five years old when that photo was taken. Later they told me that you could see her on the diaper packets when she was a baby. So I didn´t have the honour to discover her.
Susana is an hungarian gipsy – what´s the romani world for that, when speaking of a woman? A romani? She has a tough life in Chile, I can understand. Still people isn´t completely negative to the roms. There are mixed emotions. Often they are rather admired. But maybe on a distance, mostly. You can often see them in TV; recently there was a reality show on romani life. They represent the freedom the chilean seldom allows himself. Like showing bold manners on the street, for example. /Mooseeyes
Conita
Nehuentue, Chile, April 28 2012
- I´m sorry, how do I drive to come to that ruca that is supposed to be around here? (Ruca=house in mapundungun; the language of the mapuches.)
- Hey, don´t bother. Welcome on a free tour in our ox cart in stead!
OK, thank you very much! The lady behind the generous offer wasn´t at all the owner of the cart or something like it; she was rather that typical relative from Santiago who had been teared away from her home province in early years and now eagerly assumed the role as a host, showing – mainly to herself probably – how firmly related she was to the place. But I have to be just thankful to her, because from her offer sprung two unforgettable days in the little farm for five-years-old Emil and me.
And we got to know Constanza, or Connie as she was called, although I think they´d spell it Cony here. Or Conita, of course.
Such a lovely girl! She had one thousand faces, one different on each photo. This particular one fascinates me. I think you can already see the beautiful woman she will be – may God protect her! – in some years. On others she looks completely nine-year-old, which was her actual age. But in all of them equally vivid and secure.
I read a book of the master photographer Sally Mann recently. She´s really explicit about the people she portraits. I don´t dare to copy that, and that´s not meant as a criticism of Sally Mann. It´s just that I want to be sure about my own purposes. It´s easy to fall into social sensationalism. For that reason I generally try not to express too explicit in what conditions the people I photograph live or what I think about them. But when somebody grows up in utter love and it´s obvious in your photos; then you could tell so, couldn´t you? Conita´s mum is a Spanish teacher, but is now studying nursery; she lives in Temuco one and a half hours car ride from the coast village where we are now and where Cony lives with her grandparents. She visits her daughter almost every weekend. Her dad lives in Santiago and is a truck driver; sometimes when he pass by, he picks up his daughter and take her for a ride. As a consequence Cony is quite much-travelled; she knows big parts of southern Chile and Santiago too. Just imagine riding in your dad´s truck! And then the grand parents, in whose ox cart she is standing on the photo, on her way to pick apples for the chicha, the fermented apple juice that you drink more than wine in this area. In the house lived also a lovely aunt, and quite often an uncle, the two really caring about here.
Conita. Her photos make me happy. /Mooseeyes
