The Tramp

The baggy pants took me to Chaplin before I could look for anything else. It was immediate. The skateboard was right in front of me, but what appeared was The Tramp. I felt his presence almost physically, and my eyes even welled up. I love Charlie Chaplin.

I have no intention whatsoever of comparing my genius to his. That would be arrogance. What I recognize is a melancholy that, in some way, accompanies me as well. I do not turn it into a virtue, nor do I believe suffering produced his genius. Chaplin knew hunger, poverty, abandonment, and a childhood unlike anything I experienced. Still, everyone carries their own things to overcome.

What brings me closer to him is something else: turning a difficult situation into a performance. I have been stuck at times. I have known depression. Even so, I learned to act while the pain remained. Perhaps that is why I see something in my own work that mixes melancholy with creativity, sarcastic humor, and a little fear.

And then there is perfectionism. On this point, I allow myself the insolence of saying that we are on the same level. I do not easily accept mediocrity, lukewarmness, or something that could have been better.

I do not want my melancholy to become an explanation for my photographs. Perhaps no one would notice it if I did not write about it. What I did with it was something else: I turned it into empathy and observation. That is why I look for the worker, solitude, love, hardship, hunger, ordinary life, and, inexplicably, power as well.

In this photograph, I do not need the bowler hat, the cane, or the mustache. The baggy pants are here. The humor is in the skateboard. And I find the strength in the vulnerability of allowing myself to be sincere.

This is my self-portrait, even though I am nowhere in the frame.