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_{From the exhibit Private Lighterature . Townsend Center for the Humanities , University of California, Berkeley, October 25th 2006 - January 10th 2007. Dedicated to Aurélie Vialette.}

_{Special thanks to Tony Cascardi & Teresa Stojkov}

^This time, allow me to be literal. Every single photograph, each of them, has its story, and just like books, its own fate. I am not a photographer. I am only somebody who happens to take pictures, and I cannot help but think that the blueprint-tale by the image sounds powerfully.

Beyond any caption, taking a picture is, to me, a way of writing.I met Janick in the morning of July 5th 2003, in front of the church of Notre Dame du Taur’s doors, in Toulouse. Talking to him reminded me of some other photographs and conversations, namely those with Ted Woods, who passed away some years ago, at 83, and Yevgenia Troyetskaya who will be 87 next May. Both told me their versions about the consequences of World War II, or the Big War, depending on denominations that are indelibly linked to expressions I tried to capture through the third eye, the saffron one.

In all three cases, the story by the image is the war. Victory in the case of Ted Woods, who, at 80, made a trip with his son in order to explore the same places he had walked with his military boots in 1945, starting in Normandy. He took pictures of the places he photographed while he was in combat. Exile is the keyword for the melancholic lyricism of Yevgenia Troyetskaya’s narrative, who kept some of the small books and readings she could preserve from the getaway times. Defeat, disability, and illumination in the case of Janick.

Janick is sitting on the stairs at Notre Dame du Taur’s doors, painting Saint Teresa de Jesús in the moment in which she receives a divine ray coming from the yellow tempera tube squeezed by his gnarled fingers. The plates around him are mostly religious images. On one of them, there is a bearded man dressed in rags that were once a military uniform. He is lying on the ground. The Virgin passes by gracefully, walks on the street. It seems as though she is spreading flowers, but more likely, she is spreading miracles.

I take some pictures from afar. In one of them, he looks at me, having suspended his work, inquiring with his eyes as to why am I taking his picture. I keep my eye fixed in the saffron, observing his inquisitive sight. And I shoot with all cruelty. I come closer to him. It does not matter anymore. He knows I am looking at him, that I am not interested in the red bricks of the façade, that I am not really paying attention to the columns, and that I am indifferent to the gothic construction. All the solid fundaments of Notre Dame du Taur cease to exist, and we both know it. I stop and I observe what he is painting. It is a beam of divine light that he extracts from his yellow tempera tube. I talk to him, and I ask him his permission to photograph him. Disdainfully he says no. He adds that he is an artist. I lie, and I say that I too am an artist. His attitude changes, and then he allows me to look at him using the lens. I continue taking pictures of him and his hands while he works. He does not only paint religious images, but it is what he cultivates most. He has been doing it ever since something happened to him, sometime.

I take out my small notebook and ask him for an address to send him the pictures. He pulls his face before telling me that he has no address, that he is a street artist. Janick had received a classical education, studying Latin and Greek in Slovakia. Now, traveling throughout Europe he affirms that he experiences no difficulty learning the languages spoken wherever he stops. After high school, he went to Moscow to continue his education. He entered the military as a parachutist, and, in 1979, he was sent to Afghanistan. Over there he was very severely wounded.  He spent many months at the hospital. Half-paralyzed. One of the plates shows the same man dressed in rags, with a Christ-like resemblance, lying on a hospital bed, flanked by a pair of crutches. The bed is floating over the Virgin’s halo, who is spreading a miracle for him.

He was paralyzed, but now, look how he dances and jumps to show me how he is completely recovered. It is in the process of his recovery where he places the miracle. Thus, after his healing, he decided to come back to school to study art and consecrate his life to painting the images of Christ, Saint Teresa, Saint John of the Cross, and, above all, himself.  I have taken pictures of his face. Of his eyes, veiled by a history lived in the desert, at war, and in the streets. From his yellow tempera tube he extracts a beam of divine light that is only the mirror of his life