Jesus since childhood

I don’t discuss religion, politics, or soccer. I already have enough problems with passions that make me lose my good judgment.

“Jesus Since Childhood” has nothing to do with the mythical figure I borrowed for the title. The name came from scale. Against the skatepark and the Bay of All Saints, the athlete looks small. And yet there is tremendous force in that smallness. Above him, darker clouds seem to hold a charge that could fall or freeze at any moment. He, too, is suspended.

In most skateboarding photographs, I feel the presence of what comes next: speed, descent, continuation. Not this one. It is as if the photograph had interrupted life at the exact point where it should continue. The power to record becomes absolute and takes the place of movement. Now the photograph is the one looking at us from the place where we see it, live it, and enjoy it. It is the lamppost pissing on the dog (because “piss” is an ugly word that I don’t like).

The lamppost is difficult to ignore. At first, it gets in the way; little by little, it begins to belong to the landscape, like certain things we stop noticing after a while. I have asked it eighteen times why it chose that particular spot. It has never answered. The boat, by contrast, brings humanity back into the scale of the scene. Against the skatepark and an even larger sea, something small reminds us that people are living here.

As for the bay: the bay is the bay, just as Bahia is Bahia. There is nothing to add.