Vienna, August 8, 1991

 

I waited until we were alone to ask Omama to pose naked. She was nervous and she started talking aimlessly. I was afraid of hurting her. Today she told me she didn’t sleep last night. When she took off her cloths something inside me changed. The fantasies of her operation, that had been with me since childhood, disappeared. Her body is deeply human, fragile. So close. I hugged her. I took my cloths of too and took pictures of us together.

 

The operation happened many years ago. Omama told me that she stopped bathing with her little girl - my mother - who was eight. My grandfather’s mother told her that she had become an amazon. That’s why I imagined the photographs in the garden, surrounded by the lush foliage.