We behold a few portraits which by some feigned hazard apper to possess the esential impossibility of being alive. In them, indeed, that contradiction which constitutes the very root of wonder springs to the eye. On one hand, what we poor mortals mean by alive and commonly connect with movement; and, on the other, that verb, to be, that we connect with stillness (as in some way only the dead really are).
But in these portraits (Oh, miracle of the old technique!) we happen to be and then to be alive. Beatiful paradox which Gabriel proves and captures with his camera as he intends to objectivate a subject who is making an object of himself, on better still, a statue (*1), in a hard, slow duel aggainst Time. For through this rudimentary technique requiring lengthy minutes of impassive posing (giving Time time), in that opposing discontinuity, countenances in pure duration seem to be saying: See, nothing happened!; and for a moment such denial of velocity, such sudden stagnation of Time, allows us to unearth its sham clockworks, its ultimate nakedness, its utter idealness. And thus countenances lashed by his whip, tru "flagellum Dei", turn against him in a disturbing, endless regard, haloed by a throbbing aura, as Walter Benjamin would say.
Let's be thankful then for Gabriel's express relinquishment to fall for Hi-tech when Hi-tech rules the market for both the audio-visual and our lives (which become more and more audio-visual all the time!). Thank him for that restraint, that lively resistance to the squandering of a-thousand-stances-a-minute; for aiming a single, slow, accurate shot at the heart of Time. For retrieving those old gimmicks and long ago techniques which by rare chances (perhaps due mainly to their own imperfection) attain better than that "natural spontaneity" of modern photography to approach the impossible mistery of our lives' time.
Desember 1989
(*1) "estatua" (statue) has in spanish the same root as "estar" (to be).