Chitra and Nitya
Sorry, Chitra, I missed this one ! Well, in fact, you never really told me - which makes it harder to digest - but I am sure that you were not satisfied with the portraits I made of you at you home, after you asked me to do them. You are well educated and don't want to disappoint me - do you ? - but I can read your face, half angry and half kidding...
D'accord, l'exercice était périlleux: photographier la mère (janvier 2019) après avoir photographié la fille (décembre 2018), qui se trouve aussi être ma filleule que j'ai connue haute comme trois pommes... Pas facile. Quant à la mère, c'est bien simple: journaliste de la race pitbull comme elle se définit elle-même, Chitra se montre aussi tenace quand il s'agit de révéler les pots-de-vin versés en Inde lors de la vente d'armes par Bofors, que d'étaler au grand jour les mensonges de l'industrie du tabac. Mélange d'idéaliste et de de pragmatique, elle peut se montrer parfaitement à l'aise avec les avocats les plus cyniques de Genève ou les businessmen jonglant avec les dessous de table, sans lâcher son os. Je l'ai connue à L'Hebdo, à la fin des années 1980, quand elle y avait rédigé une "Lettre ouverte" aux Heidi de Suisse qui lui avait valu un abondant courrier (internet n'existait pas encore, il fallait se donner la peine de poser une lettre...) pour lui recommander plus ou moins poliment de rentrer chez elle. Ce qu'elle n'a pas fait, fort heureusement.
Les intellectuels, les forts caractères ne sont pas les modèles les plus aisés à photographier. Ils aiment contrôler la situation, leur image, on se sent intimidé face à eux. S'agissant en plus d'une amie, s'y ajoute la crainte de décevoir, qui peut devenir auto-réalisatrice.
Chitra, you had chosen some really nices clothes for this meeting, colourfoul indian silk, we both tried our best, but it did not come out as we would have liked - each one in his or her own way. So I tried something else, which I sometimes do in such situations (with another journalist like Anna Lietti, for instance): I asked you to talk to me while trying to convince me of your arguments. This set of images was the one I like best - or the one I disliked least. There is something in your eyes, in the movement of your hands that says to me: yes, there she is.
Maybe studio light and background were not the best setting for such an approach, but so it was. I thought, afterwards, of the famous portrait of Winston Churchill by Yousuf Karsh in Ottawa in 1941. Churchill was in a hurry and in absolutely no mood for such a mundane photo opportunity. Karsh, who had prepared his lighting in a room before, had only a few minutes for his picture. He did the unthinkable: he asked Churchill to lay down his cigar and, as the model appeared unwilling to do so, went to him and took the cigar off his mouth. Churchill was surprised, at the same time angry and amused by such a "culot", and that was the moment when Karsh released the trigger, which resulted in one of the best portraits of a politician ever done. Sometimes, you have to break the rules, probably I am not self-confident enough to do it.
This is why I kept the picture when you throw out your tongue at me. This is you too, Chitra... I like that look.
Quant à toi, Nitya, que tu es grande ! Tu en sembles parfois surprise toi-même et encore en train d'apprivoiser ton corps. Je me suis amusé à comparer vos regards, à voir ce qui vous relie et vous sépare. Mais surtout, je suis fier de savoir que ma filleule s'intéresse aussi à la politique locale et se fie à la boussole de la justice. Keep on the good work !
