I first met Mr Waha on the French Riviera some decades ago, right after a nice Monte Carlo race. At the time, I had no idea of what a profound impact this chance meeting would have on me. Mr Waha, in the short exposition that is his photostream, manages to convey all the strands of his life as a connoisseur of the i… Read more

I first met Mr Waha on the French Riviera some decades ago, right after a nice Monte Carlo race. At the time, I had no idea of what a profound impact this chance meeting would have on me. Mr Waha, in the short exposition that is his photostream, manages to convey all the strands of his life as a connoisseur of the international ethos. The historical journey starts at his piece "Observatory"; typically for his art, it has a dual meaning: on one hand, it represents the architecture of the past, on the other the way the past time in the West was used as a single large excercise in Observing God. For many, the transition to the modern period would be simple and dull: it is obvious, on the other hand, that making it exciting poses no problem for Waha. The mid-point of his photostream (and, indeed, treatise) on our history is formed chiefly by the dual pictures of 'Turku cathedral in the rain' and the obliquely named 'IMG_0799.JPG', which show the all too predictable decline of the Church in the face of Secularisation from a surprising and as a matter of fact shocking angle. In the postmodern, nothing is exciting, and everything seems equally rusty. Both these apply to the final step and synthesis of Mr Waha's flight through the collective consciousness, titled 'Mysteries'. However, Waha ascends above the usual crowd of "creative" commoners and dilettantes by injecting more subtlety into contemporary discourse with this one image than many manage to with their entire lives' work. In the words of Mr Waha: "I found this shot on my camera. I don't really remember taking it, and I can't quite tell where it was taken, although it might be outside my front door. It is a mystery.". 'It is a mystery.' This hard-to-describe single statement conveys what we others struggle to even think, and lifts the proverbial veil from our eyes: suddenly, the essence of the postmodern world of today is clear. And that essence is the fact that we now live in Uqbar. Uqbar is no longer remote, for we are now Uqbar! As I approached Waha (who at the time was a complete stranger to me) by the pool on my way to get another drink that day tens of years ago, I had a feeling there was something I didn't understand. On the surface, anyone could have seen him as a man with more than half of his years ahead of him, using a large format camera to photograph lovely nymphs with more than half of their clothes far from them. Only much later did I see what the common man still hasn't: I had been looking at a man who knew past, present and future, and enjoyed all three of them.