Taken on 21st May, 2009 in La Calzada, Guanajuato, Mexico. Nikon D90, Exposure 1/4000s at f/3.8, Focal Length 22mm, ISO Speed 250. Show on Flickr.

I found this passage by Borges scribbled on a Guanajuato wall:

Somos nuestra memoria,
somos ese quimerico,
museo de formas inconstantes,
ese montón de espejos rotos.

Jorge Luis Borges

We are what we remember,
we are that chimaera,
a museum of fickle figures,
that pile of broken mirrors.

Translated by Catherine O'Regan

Photography is often held up as the ultimate historical source, an infallible reference on everything from The Great Depression to Hughes' holiday with the lads in Ibiza.

This blog, with a photo for each day of a 516 day journey, could be preseneted and interpreted as a reliable and authoritative account of that journey. In images, and in words, I hold a mirror to myself and the places I pass through.

Not buying it? Me neither.

Each day I break a mirror here on day516.com and even more on my flickr stream.

10 Comments

  • avatar
  • Oisin wrote:
  • 26th May, 2009

This is the first post that really makes me want to consider adding more images accompanying the text, as I have done in the comments on its flickr page.

Let me know if you think it could be a good idea.

Love the quote from Borges. One of my favorites writers. Not that it has anything to do with me being Argentinian :-)

  • avatar
  • Oisin wrote:
  • 26th May, 2009

Cheers Ivan. I left my Argentinian jersey into a sports store today to get number and name on the back. Getting "Ernesto-26" as a (somewhat cryptic?) reference to Che Guevara.

Wonder how "Borges" would look on the back instead!

I woudn't think a writer like Borges on a t-shirt be as glamorous as a revolutionary icon like 'Che' so I would go for the 'Che'. But you could give it a go!

  • avatar
  • Oisin wrote:
  • 26th May, 2009

You're right, I'm getting carried away with myself: )

  • avatar
  • Euphioman wrote:
  • 26th May, 2009

I say do it, don't think supplementary images would interfere with the overall concept of the project as long as one image is clearly delineated as the 'day xx image'.

Sorry, I know you were looking for the opinions of 'photography dudes' but I thought I'd chip in anyway :D

Yeah, but what *aren't* you photographing?

  • avatar
  • Michael wrote:
  • 26th May, 2009

Rock 'n' Roll

  • avatar
  • Oisin wrote:
  • 26th May, 2009

@Eupioman you *are* a "photography dude"

@PaulMay pretty much everything!

@Michael you got it

That Borges quote is so wonderful. It really captures so much of what is going in your photoblog. Through your pictures you are "writing" the history of your travels... but this history is nothing more that a collage of the broken pieces of glass that you have been able to collect. The history, the memory, of this trip can never be complete, as you will never be able to collect all the broken pieces of glass... they will be forever lost in space and time, maybe to end up in someone else's collage.

The images you have been able to gather in this blog are like "figures in a museum"... but these are never constant, they are "fickle"... and the meaning they have today will have morphed into something else as time goes by. Thus your self, and the image that you are creating of yourself through this blog is nothing more than an illusion, a fantasy, a chimaera.