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Mildred

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This is how I received the photograph. Held by an eraser against wood painted blue. Light hits it brightest on one corner and the wood shines, parallel ridges interrupted by dents and dark matte stains of coffee and oil. The eraser casts a shadow with its tip, sharp like the pin over Braque’s man and guitar. From the analytic to the synthetic says Greenberg, the surface is always an illusion, however flattened the plain. Her edges are soft, and they blur, blending their way slowly to surface. A print with a light touch: ashy, frail.

 

Her pose is not awkward, no, not for a second. Graceful, in fact, with the curve of her hand softly reaching her chin. Her lined lips smile gently, a faint trace of wrinkle visible from nose to mouth. I wonder about that flap of lace. About the white dress, tight at the wrist. And that slim watch, so stylish with the gap between the leather pieces of strap. The spry bend of a C-shaped clasp. I wonder what they mean, the piece of lace, the watch. That she is a woman who values her time, and that she is proud, yes, she wears that on her sleeve. Perhaps she is a seamstress and this is the dress she wore to her wedding, her best one, worn once again for a trip to be photographed. White dress for a white wedding, held in the purple church in Bandra with the high ceilings and all the Thomas’ and the Almeida’s came on that sunny day and everyone spoke about the dress, she’s so skilled, our Mildred.

 

Mildred Almeida – her family East Indians from Vasai, fisher-folk. Catholics that prayed to the goddess Mumba (of the new name Mumbai). Prayers for heavier rain, for thicker waters. They spoke in a dialect of both Marathi and Portuguese, and their food, too, was a blend. Pork Curry and spit-roasted fish and they drank red wine from small clay glasses, tiny, more elegant.

 

Lines form under Mildred’s eyes, the talcum powder she dusted on to look fairer, creases, folding up against her skin. The style of her dress, the lace, the slim watch, eyebrows picked to a thin trace. Hair oiled and patted down to tame thickness and frizz. The first Indian photographers were part of an elite that repeated a colonial aesthetic, which then became the norm. This image sits differently to the cartes-de-visite of the time – single figures standing in rooms littered with plush rugs, vases, wearing jewellery and fine clothing. 80 years later, and I am sure I could find where the image was taken. Poke around their basement to find, in a glossy pile of negatives wrapped in thin plastic, an archive of photographs for every family across the hill. The photo studio, where at least two trips a year are made by the whole family together, playing with props in back rooms with changing wallpaper, has remain unchanged as a place to perform identity, family. Girls stacking their arms with wristwatches and riding motorcycles, men in Bollywood poses. But this one is different, not playful, there are no illusions on this surface. I wonder if it is an albumen print, sealed onto paper with whisked egg whites and salt.

 

Mildred married Rock in this dress, with the lace collar. Mildred’s mother called Rock that black bastard, they didn’t really get along. A patch across her hairline shines, caught by the flash. I wonder about her body, the one you can’t see, hovers as she does without one. The body with which I share blood, and I think about it’s texture, its weight, its heaviness and history. The way that things layer up – sacrifice and compromise made by generations so that someone in the future can live differently. Not just different, sometimes better. I think about where the photograph is now, on that blue painted board, held up by an eraser. Next to a canvas no doubt, one that my aunt prepares for her portrait. She’s doing a series you see, portraits of the women in our family. She wants to redraw their lines with her hand, to trace out their figures with the thickness of her brush. To collapse the space between her and them, between her and her history. For Mildred, water is the base, she paints out a background, and she darkens her skin.


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