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nonę seemcd to me really "right": ncither as a photo-graphic performance nor as a living rcsurrcction of che bclovcd face. If I were evcr ro show them to friends I could doubt chat these photographs would speak.

With regard to many of these photographs, tt was History which separatcd me from them. Is History not simply rhar time when we were nor born? I could rcad my noncxiscencc m thc clothes my morherhad worn bcfore I can rcmembcr her. Thcre is a kind of stupcfaction in sceing a familiar being dressed differmtly. Herc, around 1913, is my mothcr dressed up —hat with a feather, glovcs, dclicate lincn at wrists and throat, her “chic” l>elied by the sweetness and simplicity of her cxprcssion. This is thc only time I have seen her likc this, caught in a History (of tastes, fashions, fabrics): my attention is distracted from her by acccssorics which have perished; for clothing is pcrishablc, it makes a scc-ond grave for thc lovcd l>cing. In order to "find" my mothcr, fugitively alas, and wirhout ever being able to hołd on to this resurrection for long, I must, much latcr, discover in scverai photographs the objects she kept on her dressing table, an ivory powder box (I loved the sound of its lid), a cut crystal flagon, or else a Iow chair, which is now ncar my own bed, or again, rhc raffia pancls she arranged above thc divan, the large bags she loved

(whose comfortable shapes belied thc l>ourgeois notion of thc "handbag”).

Thus the life of someone whose exiscence has somewhat

prcccdcd our own eneloses in irs parncularity the vcry

and in order to look at it, we musc bc cxcludcd from it. As a living soul, 1 am thc vcry contrary of History, I am what bclics it, destroys it for the sake of my own history (im-possible for mc to bdievc in "witnesses"; impossiblc, ar least, to be one; Michclct was able to write virtually norh-ing about his own cimc). That is what thc time when my mothcr was alive beforc mt is—History (morcovcr, it is rhe period which interesu me most, historically). No anamnesis could ever make me glimpse this time starting from myself (this is the definition of anamnesis) — whereas, contemplating a photograph in which she is hug-ging mc, a child, against her, I tan waken in myself the rumplcd softness of her crepe de Chine and the perfume of her rice powder.

And here the essential question first appeared: did I reco^mze her?

J According to these photographs, sometimes i recogni/ed a region of her face, a certain relation of nosc and forchead, thc movement of her arms, her hands. 1 ncvcr recognized her except in fragments, w'hich is to