Screen shot 13 02 08 at 03 16

say rhat I missed her bęjnę, and that thercfore I missed hcr alcogcther. It was nor shc, and yec it was no one eisc. I would have rccognizcd her among thousands of other womcn, yct I did not "find" her. I recognizcd hcr diffcr-entially, not esscntially. Photography thcrchy compclled me to perform a painful labor; straining toward thc es-scnce of hcr identity, I was struggling among images par-cially true, and thereforc totally false. To say, confrontcd w i tli a certain phorograph, "That’s ulmost thc way she was!" was morę distressing than to say, confronted with another, "That’s not thc way she was at all.” The almost: love's drcadful rcgimc, bur also the dream’s disappointing starus—which is why I hate drcams. For I oftcn dream about her (1 dream only about hcr), but it is ncver quite my mother: somerimes, in the dream, rhere is something misplaced, something cxcessivc: for example, something playful or casual—which shc ncver was; or again I know it is she, but I do not see hcr fcatures (but do we see, in dreams, or do we knou>})\ I dream about hcr, I do not dream her. And confronted with the photograph, as in thc dream, it is thc same effort, the same Sisyphean labor: to reascend, straining toward the essence, to climb back down without having scen it, and to begin all over 3gain.

Yct in chesc photographs of my mother there was al-ways a place set apart, reserved and prcscrved: thc bright-ness of hcr eyes. For thc moment it was a quite physical luminosity, thc photographic tracę of a color, che bluc-grecn of her pupils. But this light was already a kind of mediation which led mc toward an essential identity, thc genius of the beloved face. And tlien, howevcr impcrfect,

each of thesc photographs manifested the very fccling shc must have expcrienced each timc she "let” hersclf be pho-tographcd: my mother "lent” herself to the photograph, fcaring that rcfusal would tum to "attitude"; shc tri-umphed over this ordeal of płacing herself in front of the lens (an incvitablc action) with discretion (but without a touch of the tense thcatricalism of humiliry or sulkiness); for shc was always ablc to replace a morał valuc with a higher one—a civil valuc. She did not struggle with hcr image, as I do with minę: shc did not suppose herself.

There I was, alonc in the aparcmcnt where shc . had died, looking at these pictures of my    j~"C[

mother, one by one, under thc lamp, gradually moving back in time with heii looking for the truth of tl

ace 1 had loved.\|\nd I found it.

The photograph was vcry old. The corncrs were blunred from having been pasted into an album, the sepia print had faded, and the picrure just managed to show two childrcn standing togetl>er at the end of a little wooden btidge in a glassed-in conscrvatory, what was callcd a Winter Garden in thosc days. My mother was five at the time (1898), her brother seven. He was leaning against the bridge railing, along which hc had extended one arm; she, shorter than he, was standing a little back, facing thc camera; you could rell that the photographer had said, "Step forward a little so wc can sce you”; shc was holding

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