A Day in Images / Regina Coyula

Taken at the moment in which the dentist was beginning the torture session

I secretly envy those who achieve those photos that I would like to have made. Before, with the film camera, there was a “roll.” Getting Orwo film from East Germany was a tiresome task: if there were rolls, the 100 ASA did not suit me; I detested the Orwocolor, which always seemed to be expired; but the 400 ASA Orwocromes were hard to get. Developing a roll was a matter of months in the “consolidate enterprise.” They also sold little rolls of slides that were developed with the same delay and had to be viewed with a projector. In the 1990’s Orwo disappeared, and Agfa and Kodak reappeared, but now those came in the other currency that has marked our lives, and my little Minolta camera, a gift from my brother Michael, sits in some drawer, which, if it exists, well I have lost sight of it a long time ago,just as it has been years since I’ve seen a roll of film.

The invasion of the digital camera changed photography forever and was love at first sight, but impossible love. It was not until a little more than three years ago that they gave me a very good digital camera that I dropped on the floor on my trip to Spain last year, and when I took it to a shop for repair, the clerk ended up selling me another.

With that little second-rate camera I entered myself in the competition of aday.org in order to photograph my 15th of May. I got up ready to do a portrait of all that would be my day. In the end I found myself with almost 100 photos from which I had to choose ten (the maximum number admitted in the contest). I decided on a group that reflects occupations. They are not great photos, but in almost all can be seen the attraction of the photographed for the lens. All strangers (except the dentist), they had no objection to being photographed, and even those who do not seem to have, “posed.”

My reality has a decaying beauty that makes the shutter contract. A foreign observer could not perceive the conflicts running through them. My images do not reflect misery, not even evident poverty, but life in one of the best places of the city, and I did not leave home. On the other hand, as is already known, the essential is almost always invisible.

Translated by mlk

May 18 2012