78

his cock as he finishes putting it away and reaching the corner crosses and continues past the people in front of us. We walk another two blocks and he turns down a side street, I momentarily catch a fuller look at his face as I continue straight. It is that face one sees sometimes in pornographic movies, handsome and disconnected.

Sept. 5. 1976

Darkness has the effect of eliminating the first stage of pleasure and of allowing us to enter straightforward into a world of caresses at which we usually arrive only after some time has passed... In the darkness, all of the old habits fall away, hands, lips, bodies can act immediately. ...immediate response of the body which does not withdraw, which approaches (and) gives us an unprejudiced notion of the person we silently address, full of vice, a notion that provides us the additional pleasure of having succeeded in tasting the fruit without having desired it with our eyes, and without having asked permission.

Proust

79

The author of "Alice in Wonderland felt most at home at this point of interchange between a fleeting reality and the realm of shadows taking on life. Through his photography he learned about the extinction of the subject and its resurrection beyond reality: he knew all the paradoxes of photography, how to stop or extend time, how to evoke the presence of what is not there, and remove what is there. Photography had another role in his life, namely as an escape route for his frustrated love-life. To paraphrase his words, we photographers are nothing but a pack of crooks, thieves and voyeurs. We are to be found everywhere we are not wanted; we betray secrets that were never entrusted to us; we spy shamelessly on things that are not our business; and end up the hoarders of a vast quantity of stolen goods. It was photography that enabled this clergyman tempted by the Devil to purge the wicked "unholy" thoughts that nightly assailed him.