Pedro Farias-Nardi

He calls himself a visual anthropologist engaged in documenting the lives of economically and socially marginal people in Latin America. Workers. Haitians working in his country, the Dominican Republic. His work is presently being shown at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, along with...if you can believe it...the work of Vivian Maier. It's a slightly different selection of Maier's work than the one that was at Powell's last month. This is her time. I wish she were here to enjoy it. I'm glad I am.

Farias-Nardi's work, some in black and white and some in color, is profound and beautiful, deeply respectful. I want to see more, know more. His website is helpful, but the new work I saw today isn't on the website. It's called "Cold Trade," and it documents the brutal labor of Haitian workers in the ice trade in the Dominican Republic, sweating in the sun while lifting huge, heavy, massive blocks of ice. The contrasts (hot and cold, white and black, organic and inorganic) are stunning. Like Carrie Mae Weems, like Broomberg and Chanarin, Farias-Nardi uses TEXT: extended captions, poetic and detailed descriptions of what is in the pictures, to expand on what the photograph reveals. No more the old saw, "the picture must stand alone." Many artists are using a combination of text and visual to tell the story.

I saw the work with my friend Sue, an artist and poet herself who keeps a lovely blog here. If there is anything better than seeing art that rocks you right down to your bone marrow, it must be seeing that art with a friend who also sees it, really sees it, and loves it as you do.

I continue looking for the young man who dreams of being an artist's model in another time. Haven't yet found him. And this news flash: Taiga, my dear old cat, is still hanging on. I told him this morning, "It's OK to go. You can go if you need to." When I came home from the art gallery, half expecting to find him dead, he got up to greet me, leapt into my lap under his own steam, and purred for a good five minutes. I guess he missed me. However now he won't even eat his broth.

I am touched by the comments on yesterday's poem and picture. Many of you have lost, or are losing, or fear to lose aging loved ones, human and animal. We ride these waves, fearing to lose them, fearing to hold onto them selfishly if they are suffering. Our tribe, this community of people of common interests and habits, our tribe stands together, weeps together, mourns and cheers for each other's sorrows and triumphs. This is just what a tribe should do.