Nikos
Nikos passed away a few years ago. It was the second time I felt orphan. Last Saturday it was his name day. I couldn't visit him at the cemetery.
He taught me how to look at a picture. Just that or all of that.
There are people who exist in our life and make even lighter the unbearable "lightness" of being.
Anything that today is meaningful to me, happened because of him. For the first prize I have received, it was with him that we strolled the streets to find the right frame for the competition. After a couple of days he found it for me. Accidentally, as it usually happens, but he was there.
And then he offered me a poetic interpretation of my images. Three of them but they were enough to demonstrate to me the power acquired by things and persons when they are photographed.
Later he just stopped me from hunting "likes and comments". He said: "There is nothing noble or flattering in the expression "nice shot". It just erodes your enthousiasm".
HCB was for him the most silent and, at the same time, the most talkative of all photographers. Nikos would describe every picture of HCB's by heart.
He was also there when big changes were happening in my life. And he was the only person who had the sensibility to let me be and tell me how "nothing is important, yet the noise of time is sad, so hurry up".
I see him every day coming out from his "night images in the foggy landscape of Oostende" hanging on my wall. Ready for yet another stroll.
