Fotografía

Ouka Lele

05/05/88. (Sala 099)

From 5 May – 4 June 1988.

“A wound like the mist in the sun” 1987

PHOTOGRAPHY

Black dark night, full of darkness.
Love that moved all beautiful things.
.The sun and all other stars.
The bright sun warmly caresses our beloved land.
The Sun, the light.
The sky, the light! The gods……..a dream
Sleep, eternal sleep
¡Let there be light! And reality hits me inside.
Something in my heart trembles.
The light the bodies reflect dance in my eyes, stabs my girls,
and two black nails bleed deep inside me.
If only I could tell you how I feel through my eyes! but
what will yours see?
Perhaps drawing a line with a pencil I could make you feel the same
as me,
when I look at a tree.
The first time I saw snow, it turned my stomach
then, faithful lover, I haven’t been able to stop admiring it.
The first time I opened my eyes…….
The first time I saw your smile.
The first time I saw so many miracles and every one of them that surround me.
Always the first pure look, in this eternal present instant.
The light! Work with light! Light as a working tool!
Then I discovered a device, a dark camera, which closely resembled an eye.
Well…just by the way it worked, not at all by its beauty.
A paintbrush that looks like a mistaken finger. Its nail doesn’t grow. Its hair grows.
A fountain pen is a finger with a dirty nail, like a schoolgirl, but neat like a lady.
And so, with that mechanical eye, I discovered I could collect small pieces of reality.
The light that emanated from the bodies, remained stuck on a piece of gelatine,
when the light made an impression by surprise.
Now!…..and the light was captured, hat a game!
The photographers, aggresive thieves, go around stealing the light from the people.
From the lanscape,
From all that is caught.
This piece of reality, built with light which is stolen,
becomes a treasure, a jewel.
And it ought to be valued as such.
Photography is an instant eye.
It is the memory that stays of this human age.
Photography is a view that needs to be built
An ivory tower needs to start to be built.
There is a look, that we should start destroying, which deviates from purity.
Photography is a river where a girl called diaphragm bathes
wearing a dress with magical numbers: 2, 8. 4. 5, 6 8. 11. 16. 22. 32. 45…
The photo is you, yes you. All the YOU’s that are out of my sight.
Photography is a ritual, to invoke the Muses.
Photography is an instrument for observing nature.
It is the invention of someone in love to conserve time, the object of his love, in time.
Light invents photography.
Photography invents photographers and mistreats them
until they surrender at your feet and gently penetrate in your secrets.
I then discovered with a lot of patience,
that some colours and a paintbrush
could pamper captured reality
and by caressing and stroking it a copy of the colours of my memories were obtained.
And it could also bring a face so close that you could almost touch it
and move some chairs to a point where they are left in the dark.
The most hidden things stand out, small and imperceptible,
it veiled that which had absorbed the most light.
And I smelled the forest musk in the folds of a cloth.
I spy
What do you spy?

OUKA LELE