• I left the gym sweaty and only slightly wired, and there in front of me appeared a beautiful woman with long dark hair, a camera, and an exquisite sense of calm usually reserved for Persian cats. I felt such relief. Trust was born in an instant, because in that instant I realized she wasn’t a voyeur, but an explorer.
• The “session” took less than half an hour. I took a shower, put on my robe, and filled with the exhaustion of relief got back into bed. Veronique saw my veil hanging on the chair and asked if I minded being photographed in it again. No, not at all. That was my life at that moment, and though re-donning the veil was a fiction, it was a fiction filled with truth. My marriage and my joy was how I was emerging from dream’s gate into life - and maybe Veronique sensed that. The only thing missing from the beautiful photograph she took is how wonderful my love smells in the morning.
• What follows in this book is how these groups of men emerge from that intimate place of darkness into the day on the particular morning Veronique came to photograph them. Some, still sleeping, gaze at death’s amorous side; unencumbered by manhood, they look like boys. Some you see playing with Veronique; delighted she is there, delighted they are being regarded. Others are shy; some are deeply grounded, confident that they need not present themselves to the camera, knowing it will find them. They are all beautiful.
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• One of the questions the photographs seem to answer is, how do we prepare for the day? How do we prepare for life? In the smallest actions we create who we are. I love looking at the smallest detail, the smallest action - an old balloon lying on the couch, the way someone washes his hair or holds his cup. It reminds me of what the director Carl Franklin once said to me: The camera is lovingly interested in it all; the camera is interested in you. Veronique Vial is lovingly interested in it all, and she finds the truth in the fiction time and time again, like a seeker who knows where the grail is hidden.
• Jennifer Beals
• 很美的文字,我就不多言了。很可惜,只有这一张照片,而且我估计大家都见过。