Yesterday I was overwhelmed by an old memory from many decades ago. I remembered how the piano key’s at my grandmother’s place smelled. It is a difficult thing to describe smells, particularly those to which you don’t relate to. As much as I would like to describe it, the only possible compared smell is the one from Billiard balls, however the smell will not have the patina of the myriads of fingers touching the keys. 

The memory also brought back my feeling of loss, when the piano was taken away, sold, to be finally played. It was a memory of an opportunity lost, of letting go, and, of moving on. I still remember the piano fondly. 

So how does this relate to photography? At least in my case and thematic, I am conveying pictures of spiritual, or forms that bring some spirituality or sense of awe and unknowingness to the viewer. They are smells of piano key’s, that some people might relate to, while others will just keep scrolling down or moving on to the next picture. 

Like a teacher said, I am trying to take pictures of that which is not visible. This brings me to Minor White, and his idea of the Resonance of a picture, that to which we respond and makes us take the picture, that which makes a picture more than a document. That, for me, is magic, and like the smell of the piano keys, cannot be described, only felt by either pressing the shutter or opening to the sensitivity of the image.

I am fascinated by how interesting it has become to show new compelling imagery, how it is linked to the past and how, specially, humans tend to make the same pictures. Take a tourist city and you’ll see tourists making the same picture on the same spot even if it is not a really known one. This takes me to think about going through cliches. Something that everybody does, but that a moment in time I feared. Now I embrace it. This was thanks to a workshop with Adam Jeppesen at FOAM, he convinced me that the only way to move forward is not to take it too seriously and just take those shots and move on.