Photo for Sunday May 1st, 2011

"Genevieve In White", Brazil, 2010. Juliana Beasley.

As I look, at this photograph that I took of Genevieve, the daughter of my newfound friend, Madeleine with whom I share an e-mail correspondence, I am reminded of the simplicity of what life might be for me without so many "things" to clutch onto. Maybe it is a childish fantasy but I do believe somehow that it exists, if not for me, for others who perhaps have found and accepted the truth that life does not have to be so complicated.

I can only hope for more calm, more time in this next year to allow me to step away momentarily and remove this costume called "Juliana". I will return to Brazil, in body or mind, wearing a white dress brilliant and pure in the hot afternoon sun. I will search out the rough touch of tall grass upon my legs and the cool breeze that dries the sweat collecting in between the hairs of my brow. I hope to find the quiet and the inexplicable which was always here. 

Madeleine and Her Children in Brazil

                                Madeleine and Her Children, Brazil, July 2010. Juliana Beasley


I approach Madeleine one morning when I see her sitting at Frutti's, the local gringo caffe on the main street in town.

The first time, I saw her in white, she was standing, sandwhiched between her two children, Francois and Genievieve. We are all waiting on lines to see the healer. She like all of us are here on some quest, some kind of medical intervention to cure our souls whether it be of some physical, mental, or spiritual malady. We are basking in the reflection of the white clothes. We have come from all over the world with a luggage full of white clothes and with the hope to be healed.

If there is anything to be said on the subject of aura's, she radiates the colors of innocence, calm and purity that you only see in some children. Indeed, she is small in stature... like me, small. And I immediately gravitate towards her, I can feel a direct pull moving me in her direction.

I want to meet her and I want to photograph her during my three week stay.

This is the photograph I took of her.

When I corresponded with her recently via e-mail, she told me that she still remembers me standing there with my camera in hand. She said, I appeared vulnerable. And I was. I was vulnerable to all that is out of our control. I was vulnerable the moment. Maybe I was just vulnerable to change.