|
After a good night’s sleep I found
myself recovered from the previous day’s exertions. I
was inspired to explore Ibiza town. Christmas day had come
as if it was the first day of creation. The air was as sweet
as a virgin’s sigh. On the port, everything was in pastels.
My photographer’s eye was charmed wherever I looked.
On the quay, in front of a crumbling hotel called the Norai,
they were gently unloading a car suspended in a cargo net,
just as they had unloaded my little black Renault. The work
voices of the stevedores sounded just right; not raucous,
not rowdy, not randy. Traffic on the streets was subdued.
An occasional taxi. An occasional private car. But mostly
it was donkey cart transport or a mule and wagon in town from
the farm. This was Christmas time and life was even more relaxed
than usual. Ibiza town seemed to be dreaming. The movement
on the streets and on the town square, the Vara de Rey, was
like a stately saraband, repose implicit in each muted motion.
All was right with the world for me, notwithstanding that
the cold war was at its height and I was in the middle of
a divorce.
On this special day, only my second in Ibiza,
just as I left the port area and approached the corner which
led to the main square and the Hotel Montesol, I saw a photo-shot
that was made in heaven for photographers. Slung on my right
shoulder I was carrying my Polaroid camera which I tried to
keep with me, always. And on this day I had it. Its great
virtue was that it was a door-opener. Sneak, or openly take
a shot with it, develop the shot in less than a minute, deliver
the picture to its astonished subject and you’ve made
a friend. After that you’d always be welcome to shoot
at will with serious film in your working cameras. But in
1964 Polaroid’s were unheard of in Ibiza, so what happened
when I actually used it was quite astonishing. And, because
I had it with me, I was not caught unprepared when providence
sent me my second great photo opportunity since arriving in
Ibiza. The first had been that super shot of Flipper looking
down at me from the window of the Renault as it was being
lowered to the dock; and now here was another eye-opener as
a holiday offering.
Standing almost up to his hips in the heart
of what had become an elongated island of brilliantly colour
Christmas-gift, fruit-and-spirits baskets, was a municipal
policeman. Dozens of baskets had been set out to form a centre-line
island in the middle of the street. It was narrow to start
with, then widening out towards him, where it was at its widest.
The display of gifts stretched for at least six or seven meters
before and then again behind him. And he, with a near permanent
smile in place, was languidly directing what little traffic
there was with white-gloved hands. He was a rather stout,
elderly, beaming man, with kindly blue eyes; with iron-frame
spectacles dropped to the lower part of his nose, he looked
rather like the stereotype of an absent minded professor.
But at the same time, with his white hair bursting out from
under his cap, and with his silver uniform buttons gleaming
in the bright sunlight against his spotless blue uniform itself,
he also looked the very image of a benign police Santa Klaus.
I learned later that he was only one of a few such popular
policemen which made up Ibiza’s pocket-size police department
in those days. And it reflected the almost entire absence
of even minor criminality on the island. I discovered that
no one locked a door or tied a handbag to oneself. There was
a pervading feeling of confidence in one’s fellows. A
handshake was as good as a Deed. Ibiza was that way then;
alas, it is not that way now.
He was an astonishing sight, standing there
amid his Christmas gifts from a loving public, especially
to a veteran New Yorker like me, whose culture had taught
him to look upon police more as enemies than as friends. But
Ibiza’s culture-impulse was to shower this monument to
municipal solidarity and communal fraternization with dozens
of beautiful and quite expensive presents from his personal
constituency. The gifts were vouchers of their trust and faith
in his goodness, comradeship and professional dependability.
It was a statement such as I had never seen before and one
which I shall never see again. It staggered me. And it provided
me with an insight into the nature of the people of the island
which consolidated my affection for the island itself. It
made me almost forget I was a photographer. But not quite.
Now, photographically speaking - and I‘m
afraid I’ll have to be a bit technical here - the nature
of the shot was daunting. One wanted somehow to include the
entire 10 to11 meters long island of baskets, aglitter with
Christmas gift wrappings - in the middle of which stood our
symbol of civic benevolence. The depth of field required was
OK for my Polaroid, but the perspective was tough. In order
to include the bulge in the middle of the gift island, wherein
stood our hero, and in order to provide a proper dramatic
organization of the whole subject, it became clear to my eye
that it would require of me a somewhat unconventional shooting
position, given that my subject was in the middle of a roadway,
albeit a somewhat dreamy one largely traversed by mules and
donkeys. In short, I found that in order to make optimal creative
use of such a super subject, I would have to lie down flat
on the asphalt, positioning myself at what passed for the
front end of the island of gifts. Then I would have to shoot
toward our friendly lawman! This was all right with me, but
how would it look to Santa standing there with a near permanent
smile on his face? And how would it look to the locals sitting
in front of the Montesol having their morning coffees? I knew
how it would look. It would look like a crazy foreigner up
to another crazy antic, much too early in the day. But so
be it, I had to get the shot. And I did.
I stretched out full length in the street
at the tip of the island of gifts, carefully focused on my
main interest-point, our kind police officer, and methodically
made sure that the exposure was set correctly. Before anyone
could have me institutionalized, I got the shot! And what
a wonderful shot it was! There, among the generous gifts of
his many admirers stood a beaming police Santa, his right
arm grandly signalling a mule and wagon to pass. He was smiling
right into the camera with only a whiff of disbelief showing
in his face at the implausible sight of a foreigner lying
in the street in front of him! But the smile was genuine.
One more detail: the passing mule had become a not inconspicuous
element of the whole. And the mule, it must be noted, was
smiling, too.
As I got to my feet after I had the shot,
I thought it was all OK in Ibiza that early Christmas morning.
And as the image was developing in the Polaroid, I walked
slowly over to the white haired old man standing in his veritable
garden of gift baskets. By the time I reached him the picture
had popped out of the camera and, without a word, I gave it
to him. His face would have made another special shot because
it showed such incredible disbelief; he looked as if he had
just learned that the earth orbited the sun and not the other
way ‘round. But he was not the only discoverer of a new
astronomical verity. As soon as the dozen or so people sitting
at their tables at the Montesol saw their symbol of municipal
incorruptibility standing stupefied in the middle of their
gift offerings, there was a spontaneous and universal rush
to see why he was so affected. Crowding ‘round us they
were awed by what seemed to them my own personally constructed
photographic miracle. They had no idea the Polaroid was a
mass produced item. To them, before I laboriously explained
it all, I was a world-class photographic inventor.
Drinks were indicated and we all trooped
over to the tables they had just left. The mules-and-donkeys
traffic would just have to do without its Christmas morning
police officer. Brandy with coffee was obligatory. I had to
tell them about Polaroid’s in particular, and about picture
taking in general, over and over again. That wasn’t as
easy as it sounds because I had less Spanish than I have now
and they had little enough English. But somehow, we managed.
Now I was doubly known as the great American photographer.
My first shot of Flipper in the Renault had already become
legendary. And to this day, almost 40 years on, I still occasionally
meet someone in the streets of Ibiza town who stops me to
tell me they were there when they saw me take their first
Polaroid picture.
Later that day, like Hungry Hannibal, I
was to meet an incoming boat from Barcelona. On it would be
my Parisian hostess and her family. With them I was to travel
west to a place just north of San Antonio Abad. And it too,
would shape the beginning of my new life on the island I had
already grown to love.
Harold Liebow
haroldliebow@ibizahistoryculture.com
| |
