“Me as Photographer”

When I was around 9 or 10 years old, I lived in Buenos Aires. A neighbor next door, Monsieur Dubois, was an amateur photographer. He had a small darkroom where I had the opportunity to look how he developed his prints. We would walk around the neighborhood; I would take his little dog by the leash while he took pictures. 

It was some time before I could buy a simple camera. My parents were not poor but spending money in a camera or in long holidays was out of the question. When I finally got it I focused on other subjects, mainly family portraits, as those of my first two children.

After a long time, feeling uncertain about the major I had chosen––accounting, I engaged in an inner trip to know myself better. Then I got a good opportunity to work for the government in the department of Economic Planning, where a colleague sold me a Leica. I took it to The Netherlands, when I came here to do a post-graduate course on Economics. Unfortunately soon after coming back to my job in Argentina I was dismissed. Another military coup had set things upside down.

At that time I would spend long weekends and holidays camping with friends and exploring the least known and hidden sites of my homeland. Of course, I always had my Leica at hand. Then I began to relate the camera to the landscape; I took black and white pictures of Patagonia, but also of the hills and plains in the center and northwest in Argentina.  By reading books on photo- techniques I soon was able to master the developing process. 

One day, after 8-year tenure at the university my life collapsed. The last military coup became a harsh dictatorship (1976-1983) that kept many people arrested for a variety of political  reasons. I was one of them.  Out of a sudden I lost my job, my belongings, and almost all contact with my wife and children. After three years I got the chance to leave Argentina and come to the Netherlands as a political refugee. I was told I could get a job. As usual, my Leica traveled with me. 

However, when I arrived no job was available, nor was it possible to return to Argentina. So, at 53 I made up my mind to study photography seriously.  I signed up at the Nederlandse Fotovakschool and after four-year intensive training and practice I got my diploma. Anyway, I had already started a real photographic project, Periferia. I had got the idea walking down the outskirts of Amsterdam. The unusual friendship of abandoned objects and the plants growing nearby caught my eye. I wanted to make sense of my project, so I wrote a kind of manifesto: I could grasp that landscape very well because I considered myself a peripheral being. 

In 1987  I met Henny Allis at a meeting of amateur photographers. She worked as a nurse and we soon engaged in a professional project called Tussen Leven en Dood (Between Life and Death): an extensive photo essay reporting on five services of the Academic Medical Center of Amsterdam (AMC). Exhibitions and a book followed suit.

Two years later, thanks to the success achieved with our work, we started another project on the so called “alternative therapies”. Those pictures were also exhibited and became a book which got reviews and articles in newspapers and magazines. 

By that time I was able to replace my old Leica by a modern camera. Luckily my old and almost forgotten photographic subjects were demanded again. I made some trips to my homeland, when I could tour Patagonia. Besides, I traveled to Morocco, Tanzania and India on a professional basis. This allowed me to leave sick people behind while searching for other subjects. 

The mental and physical suffering of my colleague and partner, who eventually passed away, caused me deep grief. However, it also spurred me to resume my wandering until almost exhaustion. The ghost of my old Leica pushed me to take pictures of what I came across on my way. 

In August 2014 I became a “lonely walker”; when a subject just crossed my mind, I got to shape it in a picture. One day, a friend of mine gave me a digital camera and asked me to take B/W shots. Then Only in Black and White was born. Later, when exhausted and dreaming I came back from a long walking weekend, I thought of taking pictures of footpaths left in the fields, forests, dunes and heaths.  I added a dialogue and the book became Senderos / Footpaths. All these six years I have been on the roads taking pictures which have been collected in some home-made books: Andanzas / Roamin’, Itinerarios / Itineraries, Sombras, Nada Más / Nothing else but Shadows”. 

As my physical condition weakened, I thought of a less demanding project: like Flora Marginalis, or the last one, Discontinuity of the Parks, which I carried out between March 2020 and February 2021. For this purpose, I visited some 34 parks in Amsterdam City. 

Looking back I must admit that I have always been a walker. As a child I walked with my father, later I walked with my camping champs, then I wandered with Henny and lately, just alone. Photography started as a hobby, but it eventually became a profession which overshadowed my academic past. 

My amateur colleagues remark that I have always worked on a “project”; that is, based on a general idea, a main theme, a heading and some early notes I write down beforehand. 

True, I always care about shapes; and it is not unusual that I can see things perhaps other people can’t. I usually tell my children: “Do look, but try also to see.” People may walk, even more than I have, but I would dare say few of them can see those things that are waiting to be photographed. Then, they go on their own way.