Monday, August 20, 2007



My memories of my house in Melian in Buenos Aires are cloudy. Of our dining room I remember that we had Thomas Gainsborough's Blue Boy and another which I swear my mother called Mistress Willoughby which showed a young girl wearing either a sun bonnet or holding a parasol.



I will never forget our pink floral paper drapes. My mother had obtained them from an American friend. During the war cotton and most cloth was deemed necessary for the war effort so Americans bought these paper drapes.



My memory of all this centers around the year 1949 when I was 7. I loved that Blue Boy and I was not aware until many years later of the cliché it was.




In recent times I would assert that Gainsborough's Blue Boy has been replaced by da Vinci's La Gioconda as the cliché image to be found decorating waste paper baskets.



While I have never asked Rebecca what her favourite colour is I would guess that blue must be the one as in most of my portraits of her (these were all taken in Mérida, Yucatan) there is always some blue.



And here is that first picture of Rebecca in her yellow and blue Uruguayan dress. We had just purchased it when we stumbled into a Punta del Este tea house and took this picture that started this series of Rebecca staring at the camera with no hint (almost always) of a smile. This is Rebecca three years ago. The usual combination for this one and most of the above is a Nikon FM-2, an F-2 35mm wide angle and Kodak Ektchrome 100G. Because of the low light of most restaurants I usually shoot wide open at 1/60 or 1/30 sec.