One of the friends I remember from earliest youth (earlier than the youth still with me :) ) took a photograph a few years ago, which just by seeing, made me feel thunder and lightning and I would get chicken skin all over. I could imagine him seeking to capture the precise moment when the lightning fell on my hometown, Huancayo. That very moment in which one is an instrument that captures _probably_ a sublime moment not to be reapeated, ever…
A few days ago I mentioned it to him and he said: “Oh, those five minutes of glory we all have” To which I replied: Five minutes that do not have to be five minutes of glory, but which could be a life, an eternity”.
Later when I asked again about it, (for the sake of writing this article), he said, “For the record I’ve done better (photos) …”
I suspect / know. Then why did you link it with “5 minutes of fame”?
Dennis: “For two reasons. Not so much for the exposure (photography wise) that did not even reach a minute, but because everybody or many people know me by that picture, like those actors who come to hate certain roles they’ve done in their life, okay, if that picture is impressive, it was not casual, but now I’m currently trying to improve it and overcome it. “
And that’s where I was going …
When I was younger, many of the so said achievements were subject to external recognition (or at least that’s what we are taught to believe), that is, if the world does not recognize it, it does not exist. However, throughout the years I discovered that the real achievement was not in the external recognition but a phenomenon more private, more intimate.
Such is that, that Dennis, would get emotional when he remembered his father looking at the the photo published in “Somos” (one of the most widely read magazines in Peru), causing him a lot of satisfaction.
If we compare that to the volatile appreciation or depreciation of which we object for others, that phenomenon of recognition is perishable and can raise to a mere mortal to extreme levels of deification or bury it in the darkest tunnel of scorn.
On the contrary, the true enjoyment and what I think is given to humans, lasts much longer than 5 minutes, can last a lifetime if we so desire.
And so I want to share the driving force that leads me to do things: It is those moments (many more than I can count now) where I witnessed being instrument, object and subject of an exquisitely sublime moment, those moments of life beyond routine in which one witnesses something and become part of a phenomenon that leaves us floating there in the middle of something extraordinary.
It happened to me in Pennsylvania (and then I was using an SLR camera) when I knew that this picture was unusual, a pregnant woman in the river, flowing like the river flows, with the belly full of life and joy, full of magic, transmitting beyond the human, almost ethereal… you could touch her joy of being pregnant or maybe not…
I also felt moments like this in my country, several times, a ray of sunshine filtering, the movement of wings, taking the image with that special light onto another level, a level of connection with the beauty of the divine.
In England, on two occasions, once when photographing a horse (winner of a photo contest, the image of which many say is a painting) and another when I was in the woods, fascinated by my connection with nature.
This fever that grips you, the thrill of indescribable, the feeling of connection to the universe, when one partakes of something so immense, so vast and is lost in the immensity of that feeling of fullness, there is nothing more that matters, just doing what one loves.
And so … there were many times when I could not wait to reveal my pictures and I spent all the money I had, to reveal them and get in a kind of trance watching them over and over again. Many of these photos have not been published yet and I do not know if I will, they keep a kind of mysticism characteristic to its particular beauty, which makes me save them as treasure …
Even now I feel it with the digital camera. Suddenly I see a picture and I fall into contemplation, feeling how beauty fills my being, my day, my time, filling my heart and life in delight . That, a phenomenon so internal, one could not compare with anything else and that it is then that I decided that I would just do what I feel passionate about: Taking pictures, designing, writing the blog, painting, decorating, dancing, doing business or whatever the activity.
This phenomenon, I think, is the true gift of my life, the true engine of my existence (or one of them), and this is where the real gift resides … the gift of being able to let oneself be an entity through which to achieve things, things you would expect the universe to do for you
P.S. Today I decided to leave you with that precious photo of Dennis and keep my pictures to that sacred space of mine. And so, off I go (And so does Dennis) to keep challenging myself, adventuring myself, working myself into the limitless art of doing.
P.S. Click on the image for a larger view.
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