“For as rare as it may be,
Or as aged,
Only one wine is duly excellent:
The one you drink calmly
With your oldest
And most silent friend…”

Mario Quintana

“Each individual is unique,
and each individual is many individuals whom he does not know”.

Octavio Paz

 

Casually, I was born with large port-wine stains on my skin. As opposite to what one would expect, I was never affected by it. I barely had the notion that I carried them with me, and people around me barely noticed them [or expressed it] until, on a Sunday afternoon on a busy avenue, a stranger followed me for several blocks, insisting I was a devil – who had been appropriately marked in the colour wine.

Only then, finally, “thanks” to that [in]convenient stranger, I found myself curious about the surface through which I experience the world, my space for self-construction.

In my domestic environment, with the help of a remote trigger and, sometimes, also a macro extension tube, I registered, by trial and error, images that were not previously elaborated – it all happened in front of the camera. The light, in its turn, is as natural as the skin and, therefore, as changeable as the colour the stains want to be each day – they alternate from red to purple, according to temperature and mood.

The impetus for the click was given by chance, but also by my experience in this body I inhabit and, in spite of it, also by the experience of, for the first time, observing and discovering the various shades and textures of me. An act of looking at myself and allowing myself to see me. Of capturing the blood maps that make up the intimate and unique scape of my skin, and allowing me to be portrayed as an individual.