Body Mirror

PREFACE Time is no longer plunge into these pages as if they were a sea inhabit the colors as if they were spread across your own skin feel the bodies as if you were lying immobile a lizard enjoying the sun hear the sounds of the desert and the buzzing of your own nervous system smell earth paint air see the flowers blooming under your fingers become the universe you create J-P B

CONTENTS PREFACE

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I. BEGINNINGS Oranges in the Desert Listening with One’s Eyes Arms and Legs of the Earth No Time No Space

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II. LIVING Bodymind Zero Entering the Unknown Dust Will Cover You with Gold

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III. RETURNING Freezing Ubiquity Who is Watching?

The Body-House

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Visible or invisible all things so intimate as a multitude of mirrors reflecting one another Who is it ? who watches a world where naming and meaning may not frame any view where bodymind and (camera) mirror bear a strange kinship? every action or thought resonating with every element of the world from before birth latent within the ground through living a brief life disappearing coming back to this vast earth

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room, this land around me; it encompasses everything. I literally am the mountain, sky, and insects, except that my mind cannot wrap around or understand this existential truth. Infinity seems to be the nature of being. So, here is a crucial question on which my work stands, as part of a number of other questions: Do I want to live in the smallness of my mind or the infinity of being?

Buddhism and Hinduism say we are all connected. Is this what you believe?

Well, the uninterrupted presence of our beingness (I cannot not be) does not seem reserved to any spiritual or religious movement. My preconceived notions of separateness are occasionally challenged in my daily life if and when mind “evaporates,” but since there are no words for this “no state of mind,” I keep going back happily to the labeling that my mind knows. Another facet of the work is to remind myself that living in vastness is always available.

I live either in prison with answers or free with questions

To expand on your observation, I think that you would find some parallel realizations in the “higher vehicles” or “higher planes” of all religions, including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, but also in the spiritual paths of many indigenous traditions all over the world.

You’ve used infinity to describe photography, saying that you believe a photograph has infinite potential. How can a photo, that appears to be “finished” and finite, have infinite potential?

Whatever has happened has already disappeared, and whatever record we take is already a simplification, an edited experience re-read or re-interpreted differently by each one of us. If you are raising the issue of “Truth,” one could ask, as many have, how could one bathe in the same water of a river twice (or even once)? Experience seems to escape any recording; I am usually caught by the veracity of a photograph because it contains so much information, but it is as much an excerpt as a sound or a smell would be. Realizing this, can I not say that a photograph is an illusion?

Unless I love illusions, I cannot hold onto any part of “reality,” experience, or thought any

more than I can hold onto a dream. I could then say that another aspect of the work is to render the illusory quality of the experiences we live; strangely, every experience or illusion also opens the door into an infinity of other worlds, both visible and invisible.

If I can suggest the intangible within the tangible, I may enter into a figural world that escapes, or shows some of the limits of the rational world. I am specifically interested in a non-rational aspect of our lives, for with it comes insights into the nature of living. A colleague of mine once said to me, “but a body language is not a language.” It took me a long time to see that he was right: a body language is a language beyond language. A rational language has limits (its dual nature does not allow it, for example, to contain opposite thoughts, yes and no, black and white, man and woman, right and left); a non-rational expression such as music, lets us enter into worlds without limits, beginnings or endings. What is the quality of our lives then?

In a way, experiencing the infinity of being (again, the feeling of being alive, of existing) may be the only thing I can hold onto since it is always available and cannot be taken away from anyone.

In my early work, you may find many attempts at embodying beingness: watching/being the landscape, doing nothing.

Photography is always a smile at my mind’s desire to hold onto everything (and nothing!)

A poem, a book, or a dance can be experienced in an infinite number of ways. I am, naturally, happy if the viewer is inspired, uplifted, unsettled or amused. I’m always hoping that we may bathe in a new water or taste the delights of a fresh outlook.

therefore (quite) happy. So, if I have a friend who is happy with the work I produce, I’m happy, too. And by the way, as I laugh, I do not think, and as I think, I hardly can laugh.

Laughter makes itself precious for it offers nothing and in nothing everything Are you saying that your purpose is more about provoking a feeling about your work than making people interpret the meaning of it?

I think that both are relevant purposes, but none is above the other. As you may have noticed, we tend to privilege thinking over experiencing. My work is only occasionally made with a direct intention or a critical message in regards to the world. To aim for a message is difficult because the message can only be made indirectly—what language could I find to elicit questions so that the viewers find their own answers? Most of the time, the less intention I have, the more freedom a viewer may experience: and the viewer’s experience may be in the form of quandaries, emotions, thoughts and feelings, or all of the above. Rather than intentions, I (try to) work with situations “at the edge of a cliff,” unstable or unpredictable; these situations raise questions, such as “what is going on?”, “what is this?” In turn, these help me to see outside the “box” of my knowing mind.

If there is an overarching “purpose,” it is to point (first for myself), at the “lightness of being” or the extravagant chance we have of standing here on this earth and witnessing this continuous illusion

Enter the unimaginable Feel the infinity of all things Take the cat away and all the mice come in Who is the cat?

I have a predilection for laughter. If a viewer can smile, then I’m happy. Because fundamentally, once I am, or once I feel “I am,” I notice that I’m perfectly okay. Not somber, not preoccupied and

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Dust Will Cover You with Gold Maria Alejandro Toro El Tiempo (Colombia) May 2015

What makes a good photographer?

All that one produces: good writing, bad writing; good photographs or bad photographs…all is good. All is so interrelated that if I take the time to make a judgement, I start separating and live in my mind.

The more unintentional a photograph appears, the more interesting it may become, for it opens up into a poetical realm (which seems to me the nature of “reality”) where, as we experience in our daily life, nothing is known or tangible, all that is perceived is vague sensations.

At the threshold of ignorance is a vast space as opaque as a sandstorm If you enter it all the dust will cover you with gold

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What do you find fascinating about Nature and the human body?

In so many world traditions the body is born from the earth and goes back to the earth. To think that this body is separate from the earth is like saying that our parents do not live within us. Don’t we call our planet “Mother Earth?” But to walk within trees or mountains brings me back to a feeling that I may forget in my city life, not just that of literally being these rocks and trees, but also of being the very vastness of this universe.

Is our (true?) nature this small self that calculates what to get or avoid, or could it be an unnamable, limitless Self that expands beyond invisible stars?

Which photographers, architects or people have nourished your artwork?

If every part of this planet is as interrelated as our scientist friends are telling us or if we experience this interrelatedness, then everything we encounter is making us. I love painting, which I see as a crucial inspiring source, but it would be a bit foolish to name even hundreds of painters, for there will always be hundreds of others that remain hidden in dark corners. Anything that has a spirit of freedom inspires me, anything that can be classified could dull my spirits.

For example, these days I grow pine trees from seeds in my garden and have planted perhaps 200 of them on both sides of the alley leading to the house. I do not know why, but it uplifts me. So yes, anything outside the boxes of my rational mind nourishes me.

Joseph Beuys said that everybody can be an artist. Do you think that everybody can be a photographer, especially with the number of camera models available today, not to mention digital cameras?

I should briefly comment on the use of digital versus analog photography. The bare simplicity of being

human on this earth is acknowledged by the use of analog photography, which engages the apparent physical limits of the present moment and manifests the indivisibility between matter and light or the intimate relationship between life and death.

Working digitally potentially implies that textures, forms, and colors can be infinitely altered or repaired and therefore the art becomes somewhat reduced to a mental experiment (a play with intentions, desires and therefore the future, belonging to one’s mind) where the maker is “omnipotent.” Again, to work with the limits of analog photography is a way to accept all things as they are and living with the unknown (one never knows if the photograph is right until it is developed back at home); it is to accept, or be vulnerable to, the physical limits (or death) of each action.

As far as being an artist, everyone can be anything for as long as the occupation resonates with oneself. The trees do not worry about being anything other than being trees; why would we worry about anything other than what we are? Artistically, what if whatever we do is done entirely without any consideration for what others may think or where it will take us (within certain limits), while trying to discern what is important or essential each instant.

Taking a photo (especially one of yours) requires planning, and a meticulous production. What happens “behind the scenes” in your work?

The team is usually composed of two friends who will be in front of the camera, a video person, and myself. The work requires a good amount of physical commitment and mental stability, for we are sometimes under a lot of pressure from climatic elements, such as rain, small tornados, sand storms, flash floods, heat or cold (between minus 10 and 40 degrees Celsius). Everyone does all the work, from unloading the truck to

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The earth is our flesh and bones the sky our mind

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