A Worthy Struggle

Written By Sil Azevedo

The Disappearance of my Mother is not a great film, in the sense that there isn't a clear story that would keep one interested and that it lacks the qualities of a well-made documentary. The camera work is not always appealing, the editing drags at points, scenes are often repetitive. Yet, there is something to see here.

This is the struggle between a son obsessed with image making and his mother, Benedetta Barzini, a supermodel from the sixties who lost all enchantment with the very craft that made her famous. Through stitched-together scenes, at times like a home movie, we see a complex woman who has her philosophical reasons not to play along with the industry that once worshipped and still honors her.

The viewer may get tired of the struggle, which is on full display in front of the camera, and may cringe at the cruelty of showing things as they are - the mess, the wrinkles, the anti-glamour behind the scenes. But there is something of great value underneath the rubble. Through the eyes of a woman who once had the world at her feet, we see the shallowness of it all, and may come away enriched by her journey and insight.

Sil Azevedo

I was seven years old when I got my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic 133. It was Christmas of 1973. Since then, I have always seen the world through the lens. It is my way of making sense, of visually dealing with paradoxes and complexities of life. In high school I was the lab rat and spent each free minute at the feet of the Beseler enlarger, hypnotized by its magical light. Still today I enjoy low light ambiences. They say photographers do it in the dark. I am living proof - ha! Architecture school followed as photography was not a career option in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The combination of art, composition, light, form and space, coupled with the demands of physics found in Architecture have their parallel in photography. The concepts are transferable. As I started my career in Architecture, I soon found that I was more excited about the concept and the print than the actual building. Fantasy is my reality. I kept shooting, learning and apprenticing with some incredible artists. In time, as life took its turns, my original passion for photography became my full time profession. It has been almost 20 years since I walked into the pro shop and charged the Hasselblad and the studio lights to my credit card. As he saw the bill and my naive optimism, even the salesman exclaimed, "you're going to have to sell a lot of pictures..." I did and still do, but what drives me is not that. It is the unstoppable desire to understand and to relate. To me, that is photography.

http://silazevedo.com
Next

A real human touch