Photography as tenderness

Emiliano, my ex-boyfriend, befriending a chipmunk around Mount St. Helens, August 2003.

One of the things that my uncle taught me, whether he was conscious of it or not, was to watch for beauty in ruggedness, in irregularity, in decay. My uncle was - is - a good photographer, as legend says that my grandfather (Tonin) was. He was precise, accurate, and had what he called “the eye”, or “the handle”: he knew how to look, and after having seen, how to compose.

I don’t know at what point this collided, in me, with an ability to look at people with tenderness. I know when the insight happened: I was on a bus going home after a session with my analyst. I don’t think it was a particularly crucial session, but who knows? If I had been on LJ back then maybe I would have written it down and it would have been possible to compare notes, but I wasn’t.

A young friar on the vaporetto to Burano, January 2005

I was on bus number 6, turning from Via Cavazzana into Via Manzoni. It was a grey day and the bus was full of the usual bored, tired, patient people. And suddenly I realized that they were all beautiful. My uncle used to photograph old peasants, their faces tanned and wrinkled, and show them off proudly, tacitly explaining the beauty in those weather-beaten faces. Maybe it was too easy, a suspicious romanticising of old peasantry, but I still learned the lesson. Overdressed teenagers, their green eyes made up with an excess of enthusiasm, Philippino women back from cleaning houses or caring for the elderly, long-suffering office workers. They were all so beautiful, each so different from each other, like a lichen or the smooth curve of a stalk.

A couple on the same vaporetto, January 2005

My uncle also chided me because there were no people in my photos, and it was true. I was embarrassed by people. Cats don’t get mad at you because you photograph them - or if they do, they don’t glower at you. And photographing children is problematic for other reasons. I am too shy (yes, I am) to walk up to people and ask them explicitly if they care being photographed - and besides, the moment you do, they pose. Hence the cats.

My cat Terry sleeping in my father's hands, 1995

But when I photograph people, it is with tenderness that I want to do it. Catching that moment of beauty and love.

Vanice, May 2005

No, no, wait a minute! That is not what I meant. I didn't mean love between people - I meant love in the gaze that takes them in. I mean looking at them with warmth, with affection. Even if what you see is just their hands

Vanice, May 2005

or if they are unaware of your gaze - if you can touch gently on their vulnerability

Vanice, May 2005

or make their gaze your own

Vanice, May 2005

or of course, meet their eyes, and get a fleeting smile in return

Burano, January 2005

or know, just by noticing what they do with their lives, their houses, their streets, what they think, and feel, and how they connect with the rest of the world

Burano, January 2005