2) To start with the colour-slides

2) To start with the colour-slides

A story like this one starts the day you decide to sort out the color-slides. In my case the slides made by my late, former wife Chantal. She died ten odd years ago.  I have published a book about her death, Chantal, and the kids can read it when they feel like it. But her color-slides are a different story all together. What do they tell me now and what story do they contain for the children?

Of course the girls know me and their mother Marike. They’ll remember the life we all lived together, but they don’t know the life I have lived with Chantal. Maybe one day they’ll want to know: how has your life been with Chantal, what did you do without children? How do you create a fullfilling life without children?

In Chantal I describe how desperate we want to have children. How we decide in the end when all hope has faded to dedicate our childless life to travelling. Travelling and photo-shooting.

Chantal is a gifted photographer. Composition comes natural to her and her charm closes the distance to any subject. Looking at the slides I’m moved. It is her smile I see mirrored in the faces of all these people she has immortalized. At the same time I’m confronted with a problem.

However beautiful these portraits are, be they of shepherds with weather-beaten faces or old smiling ladies in traditional attire, I don’t know who these people are. Don’t know there names, don’t know there histories and I often don’t know where or when they were photographed.

It is not the first time that frustration besets me when I leaf through color-slides. I have had the same problem with the color-slides my father left me. Thousands of nameless faces smiling into the camera. I have kept but one slide-rail and threw the others away. At this point I must say something about my parents.