(1971 nostalgia )

The film starts with the burning of a photograph, something that I related directly with the lifetime of a photograph as a material object. Then I realized that what may have been portrayed is the lifetime of a photograph in the author’s memory.

I felt anxious by the fact that the description of each photograph came before the actual image was presented, and I found a relationship between my anxiety and the photographer’s anguish, since both of us weren’t able to see what we wanted to see. It seemed most of the time there was something that didn’t please the author about his photographs.


Finally he describes something that he will never be able to forget, and thus doesn’t appear burning, something that I won’t be able to forget either, since it will never be in my memory. This last and most transcendental image is not presented, an image that made the author desert photography forever. And even though his life as a photographer ends the film doesn’t seem to end, because of the lack of this last photograph.

Camera Lucida

As the author mentioned photography is not always about the objects it portrays, a photograph “is invisible”, the real important contents of the art go beyond what can be seen at first glance. The attraction or repulsion we may feel for some photographs would be mostly related to subconscious or profound perceptions of the portrayed event. But even when photography is able to communicate these profound ideas, the essence of a person is something that seems to go beyond the capturing capabilities of photography. This may be due to the fact that, even as highly intelligent animals, we still rely on other complex senses to perceive people and our surroundings at an essential level. Let’s remember that the author said he had found “gentleness” in the photograph of his mother, a feature that seems to convey more physical or behavioral content than intellectual or essential content. But we must also take into account that the definition of essential may vary.