(Daddypuss Rex)

Wunder... ?

Dear Karl,

Given the unusual context, I’m hoping that we can excuse the formalities and skip straight to the ‘per du’s’. I hope that you are well, wherever and whenever you are. As I sit here, nearly hundred years into the future, existing in a timeline that you could not possibly conceive of, let alone perceive. But then again, maybe you are even light years ahead of me... I cannot know for sure, but I sure do ponder... As I gaze upon this piece, I cannot help but wonder...

I wonder what possessed you to take possession of these bodies... To capture them in this exact moment. To capture them so candidly. I wonder, what was your reasoning and I wonder, what was their raison d’être. Perhaps they were mere items in your colonial re/collection. I wonder what was going through your mind as you focused the lens of your mind’s eye. There is a tenderness here. There is warmth. There is also... something else... is that sadness I can spy with my little eye? Tears rolling down an upturned face and lips cascading down a downturned mouth. I wonder if, at first, you took their picture.

Leica 35mm? Then again, cameras and Freie Körper Kultur don’t tend to go hand in hand... Das ist verboten! So perhaps, this image is from a memory. A memory stored from days and nights and nights and days gone by. Days where bygones were let be... at least from a child’s eye view. There is much that can be said about that which goes over a sad child’s head.

As I gaze upon this piece, I cannot help but wonder... I wonder what it would have been like… I wonder what it would have been like if ours were a family of a different kind, of a different timeline. The kind that instead of bearing witness to a legacy built on the backs of Blacks, a legacy of guilt, of shame and of pain, but rather the kind in which they would be free. Free to live and to love unselfconsciously. Free to beat their chests and to bare their breasts and whatever else that they possess... I guess that would be the litmus test. Perhaps ours would have been the kind in which the mother is loving, gentle and kind and who simply takes the hand of das Kind instead of raising her own to strike! Oh Karl! All the things that could have, would have been... I wonder, if that had indeed been the case, if that would have stopped the rivers of salt from streaming down my face... I cannot know for sure, but I sure do ponder...

All this to say that when I gaze upon this piece, I wonder... aber es ist doch kein Wunder.

(N)ever yours,
Daddypuss Rex