Answering the question what is it like to be photographed by my brother Gabe Diaz?
One: an interesting thing happens for me, he stops being just my brother. He still remains the brilliant little kid who cannot escape the folding of paper with pattern and geometry, that would have you question from what spaceship he just walked out, whom I know. He becomes (if you have seen his photography) each one of those impressive and calculated folds in a paper object he used to create as a child. Now, though, there are no seems, no hard folds, Gabe works with the fluidity of “making photography.” If you have studied the Renaissance painter Masaccio who used a similar technique of collage of repeating characters to tremendous effect, you could draw a parallel . Gabe, with his own ingenuity utilizes this curiosity in character to study his subjects, very much, sculpturally; allowing the viewer as much dimension of the subject as he wants them to experience; his technique is unrestrained and necessary. The effect I gather from his work in perspective is parallel to many of those Renaissance painters that allow you through perspective to feel like you could walk into their paintings. With several of his photographs he will allow the viewer entrance into the photo as one of the subjects--I mean that one could experience the photo as the most repeated subject. In other photos he might taunt you with pure perspective, and bid you entrance into his photo, just to have the first thing out of your mouth be “huh? Wait a minute!” So, first because I know my brother (and he is still showing off a little) I feel pride in him because he still impresses the hell out of me, and asks me to be part of his photos.
Second (the actual photographing): I don’t like being photographed. My eyes roll all the way around the world when that camera comes out. I will spend a good twenty minutes being insufferably sarcastic when he wants to photograph just me. This is my brother, the one I fought over Legos with, the one who zooms into town, “I’ll be in town for twenty minutes, do you want to hang out?” But, then, Gabe does think of something interesting to say about me and to me when that lens is pointed at me. It is then that I get to hear what he thinks of me, in those moments he out right steals with the shutter snap. These things, are things that I often hear from other people, that he told them prior to my meeting them. If he says nothing at the moment, he creates/captures an interesting activity in and around me, and I am introduced, on the occasion of a shoot to the man I don’t know, the brother out in the world. Then somewhere in the middle of the photograph you might see that wonder I hold of what Gabe will do with my image; who and what will I meet in the future of Gabe’s photography?
I have my own art--but what is it like to be photographed by my brother? He let me live a little past forever with each time the shutter bit, I suppose, and I get to be the ghost of an instant of magical sculpture.
