This new year transition has given me the opportunity to take a few pictures, the by-products of visiting friends. Here are more glass objects from the same window sill I photographed in an earlier post. It's always interesting how the passing of a few months and different light transforms everything. And then there are portraits of two of my favorite Basque people. On the right is Johnny Curutchet, the only living American-born berstolari, and on the left is Agna Iriartborde, who has kept Basque culture alive in the bay area for decades, in more ways than one could count.
In 2013, the Basque director Oskar Alegria introduced his film " The Search for Emak Bakia" at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival. An exceptional experimental film, it weaves documentary, storytelling, and history while revealing aspects of Man Ray's time in the Basque Country that are difficult to appreciate otherwise. Emak Bakia means "leave me in peace" in Basque and it was also the name of the house that Man Ray lived in. In this movie there are scenes of women sleeping whose eyes are captured just at the moment of awakening. These reminded me of some of my favorite Man Ray photos, such as the one of Kiki de Montparnasse. http://emakbakiafilms.com/fotos/?pid=1 Kiki and the African Mask, by Man Ray 1926