LUIS

I met Luis when I was studying at the Arts universty in Venezuela. I studied there like a year and a half. In my time there I met several people, but I spent my time specially with Theater people, even when I was a Film student. I have no regrets.

In that time I never was too close to Luis, instead I was very close to Marcelo who had been my friend through high school, and with Patricia. They are people who I loved incredibly. That was not the case with Luis. Strangely I never photographed them. But Luis yes.

After quitting university because of some familiar problems, I got distant from them, more for the becoming of life than for my own desire. With time I started more frecuently with Luis, who first presented himself as Jean Luxe. I can remember him explaining that. Jean was because of her father, and Luxe was related to "Luis", but more with the word luxury but in french. Something which what he had a relation.

So much time I ago that we don't see each other, he is now in Argentina. I can feel he has changed a lot. Now he presents himself as Luis Jose, his real name. Time changes, and people too.

I assume that as much for his spontaneity as for his queerness I felt very captivated by him. That's why I asked him to take him pictures. He received me at his home, with love and humility. I had no idea of anything, or how the photos were going to be, or what the interaction was going to be like. My process is a bit like this always, I often face people and places that I do not know, and I am fascinated by the quota of surprise, and spontaneity, of more direct contact with the reality that I can obtain from that.

That day I was also captivated by his house, that place where he grew up and that now became, through art, in a place of ritual, encounter, creation. The bath, the colors. I was excited to be there, seeing everything around him also identified him. The music he heard, his books, the walls.

I remember it and I feel it as a psychedelic day, and it is not trivial that psychedelic has been the result of the photos. That time captured was a time of bare skin. Of knowing us both human, of naked skins. After the photos a significant bond of friendship and affection and love grew among us. Of voices that are spoken and heard. His naked skin. The cigars that we smoke. All the cigarettes that we smoked, and some found kisses, that stopped being orphans then, I remember everything. The skins.

I could not describe Luis so that my words do full justice to who he is completely. But it is special to be with him. And it has been special to discover things about me through who he is and what he represents. That child who always sings, who speaks singing, who dances, who walks dancing, who looks at you, who acts and does not act. That loves and that kisses. He is so much that he can not be just a man. He is a woman. He is talented and admirable. And through all that he is I knew that I should be as brave as him to be myself too, as much as I can.

I could not describe Luis so that my words do full justice to who he is completely. But it is special to be with him. And it has been special to discover things about me through who he is and what he represents. That child who always sings, who speaks singing, who dances, who walks dancing, who looks at you, who acts and does not act. That loves and that kisses. What is so much That he can not be just a man. She is a woman. He is talented and admirable. And through all that is he, I knew that I should be as brave as to be myself too, as much as I can always.

I enjoy the contact with other people, the bonds, the love, the encounter. I think that is what has brought me closer to the cinema, after photography. Because of their possibilities of relating to different people and being able to find in them pieces of oneself, in the end I feel like everyone, in fact, is one. And the individual becomes fragments of that great ALL we are. For that reason knowing oneself, as Socrates urged, I feel that it is to begin to know the others also.

I hope you enjoyed this post.

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PSYCHEDELIC SKIN (photography)