just an idea ...

I had while having a hot chocolate in the café I usually go to write and study. I drew some sketches and I could not wait to go home and set up the kind of still life studio I prepare between the living-room and the kitchen. At the beginning it was as it is, some elements symbolizing some features of my personality. Among the ideas there were a camera-like key-holder and a key, a bottle of Corona beer, an apple and a banana.

The key was placed in the heart, meaning that "home" is the most important thing for me. I read "home" as my family, the one I have around and the one I visit once a year and miss so much. The key-holder is also important as it symbolizes what a passion photography is for me.

The Corona bottle was placed closer to the stomach, where it will end, but it was off-centered to emphasize the effect alcohol has on people, the way it changes personalities by releasing them from their inhibitions. For instance, in my case it allows me to dance salsa as if I had done it for my whole life and there was nobody else around. Generally speaking, the Corona, and its slice of lime, should be read as my social life.

The golden apple - it has to be a golden one because it is the only one I like - means the healthy life, which is not completely true as I am a smoker. However, it also means how respectful I am with the environment, which in this case is true, at least, as much as I can be.

The last one to mention is the banana. It was placed in the very bottom of the T-shirt and centered but cropped as if it was an erected penis trying to escape from the trousers. Well, it's quite obvious its meaning, isn't it? The way I feel identified with sex is, probably, a topic I will cover in a later entry, so, no more clues by the time being.

There were some other ideas but I discarded them because there weren't so representative or because the difficulties of showing an accurate meaning and therefore, a right reading of them.

Few days later I took these photo-sketches I thought of taking the photos of these four things separately and then printing them on T-shirts and taking some self-portraits. At the minute, the only one I can see in my mind is the Corona one. If I manage to visualize the other photos, I will take them, otherwise, it will be only an idea I had.

my personal hero

The other day somebody showed me a photo of an elderly man. He looked absolutely normal, nothing special. However, that guy was an air force pilot during the World War II and consequently a kind of national hero here in the U.K.

English people love that. I mean, they are really proud of their war veterans. Culturally, it caught my eye when I arrived to this country because Spain didn't take part in WWII. I'm pretty sure that Franco would have been on Hitler's side, so, just as well Spain was trying to recover from its Civil War, which wasn't quite the same. In a civil war you don't fight against another country, you do it against your neighbor, or even worst, your enemy could be a member of your own family.

After a war, a crisis. It's time to rebuild what was destroyed. Economy, infrastructures, families (of course there is no way to bring back those ones lost in a war but the sense of family has to be rebuilt). In that scenario my personal hero was born. It is someone who has fought all her life to keep her family close and definitely, she is one of the pillars which holds up our family.

Now I see her as a veteran of her own personal war. It is time to go home and rest but she can't, she still has to carry on fighting day by day. I'd like to be there to help her, to carry some of the weight on my shoulders but it's not the right time. 

I'm a prisoner of my own decisions, trapped between what I was and what I'd like to become. My freedom is every day closer, which makes staying away from my family harder. 

It will happen. Someday I'll go back home and those brave ones who deserve a rest will be able to have it.

Triggerer

This is the photo that made me want to work on the subject of uniforms.

For me, she is very sexy and when I first saw her dressed in her working clothes I wondered how it was possible such a metamorphosis. The woman with the hottest guitar-like shape was almost hidden under the extra-sized clothes.

So, I asked her to pose for me wearing her working uniform to try to bring out her sex appeal.

The results weren't what I expected, though. However, I got a couple of good shots. The first of them shows a very fragile and sensitive version of her, a photo more according to her beauty. The other one is the one I've posted today. Instead of sexy she looks quite confrontational, as if she was ready for a fight. It even makes you feel a bit scared of her.

Whatever the accuracy of the photos, the idea of bringing back the identity of those people who feel it is hidden under their uniform made it owns space in my mind. There it grew enough to make me think of it as a project. Now I'm about to start it and I feel excited. Time will say if it was worth doing it.