Making photos, I often say to my models, soferi—serious, no smiles. I am prospecting for dreams and desires in the face of every child. Who is the real Magda percolating inside a nine-year-old child-body? The smile, unless natural and joyful, can obliterate the truth I’m seeking in every portrait.
How mature my young models appear when I see their image emerging from the tray of developer solution in my darkroom. Suddenly I know them in a dozen ways: Taxiakoula is not just sullen, she is sad, lonely because her Mama will leave her with grandma tomorrow for 3 weeks. Or Magda who appears to hold the pass key to tranquility, so at ease with the human and animal kingdom. How did she find this state of grace at just nine-years-old? All this emerges in the portrait.
I am often surprised when after the intimacy of a photo shoot or darkroom session, I deliver photos and witness my subjects in person. How small, how young the real Magda looks. How slender and vulnerable Taxiakoula appears. Like a star on the silver screen, the film personae is way larger than life, almost unrecognizable from Magda, the little girl who runs and plays with her friends at Milos or the 11-year-old Taxiakoula, who leans into her Mama with love and longing. Just children, but not really.