The Odds

by Coco Martin
November, 2024

I know almost every alley. I know the opening and closing times for the gates. On weekends, their footsteps fulfill the place; sometimes they bring singers and musicians. I know I have to water the flowers and keep all dogs away. My alphabetic memory will help me find the surnames in the aisles. My father taught me how to polish marble so I can earn some extra money. I have no problem with ghosts and I learned to wear black or dark blue. Tomorrow I have an interview for a position in the cemetery. Wish me luck. (1)

When approaching and distancing from the concept of portraiture, in the naive, it happens first literally. In the real world, the narrative in the close-up does not start with us but comes from every pore, mole or facial line. Perhaps in some way, as Lacan pointed out, we don't look, they look at us.

Thus all these pretensions are just attempts full of limitations because we see from -and for- our prejudice. From the other side we get coded messages with no addressee. Then, almost carelessly, we may see groups of elements, we pass the eye as a painter’s brush without really observing because the moment does not last; it is like a dynamic cartography that hurries us up and we cannot understand. We think we look. Under our desolation and admission of failure, we declare that everything is a portrait when a face barely appears in certain proportions, certain light conditions or shadows, even though we know it is an idealized or personal moment. And we settle. We think we have achieved it. We have made a portrait.

Everyone creates an alibi. I would transfer here, extrapolating, Mario Montalbetti's reflection (2) from the non-question of "why do I write?" to the real question of "when is the language of photography worth it?” Is the photographic language —pursuing to record or archive— ready to replace my memory? Is it the visual language of a cathartic nature that comes to free me from my demons? Is it and exists only for my search for eternity and to defeat (that whore that is) my own death? Does it serve as a weapon to make photographic language our own limit, and then kill it? and if we agree, does it open the window for us to build ourselves and find our identity? Is all that photography?

The self-deception factor is always as condescending as it is fatal. It is our own trap to fall into it and live happily and successfully. We are full of common places and we make them enter into art history, museums or album covers. Worse, we polish them to obtain reflection, in a selfish act of wanting to look at ourselves, in this new trap. We digest everything and wrap it up ready for mass consumption. The transforming pavement in metaphors for success. And we applaud. We applaud ourselves. This image of an iconic Peruvian musician, recently deceased, could represent the above(3). We once talked artlessly about photography and he stated "I believe that photography is the art of good luck". Rightfully or not browsing and wondering is the only way we know to get intentions and attempts done.

Susan Sontag wrote “Photography also converts the whole world into a cemetery. Photographers, connoisseurs of beauty, are also — wittingly or unwittingly — the recording-angels of death.”(4). She stated on many occasions her perspective about the pain of others. Only a person who survives that pain, can speak or tell about that pain. It made me think about who inflicts that pain. Certainly photographers don't count but they index beauty, souls, smiles, tears and corpses, in our way to obliteration.

(1) Curriculum Vitae poem. By Coco Martin. 2020 (2) “La ceguera del poema” Mario Montalbetti, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Cuadernos del Sur - Letras 47 (vol. 1), 85-109, ISSN 1668-7426 EISSN 2362-2970, (2017) (3) Pedro Suarez Vertiz wearing black by Coco Martin. Lima, Peru, 1999. Color film. Photo assistant: Francesca Brivio. (4) Introductory words by S. Sontag in Peter Hujar “Portraits in Life and Death”, 1976.