GEMMA CRUZ-ARANETA
Patrick gave us all a priceless lesson, but perhaps, not many of his acquaintances and friends were even aware of it. A few years after we met, in the late 1960s, a mutual friend informed me that Patrick was going blind. How terrible, I thought, for a photographer to lose his eyesight! Looking back, I don’t think anyone even noticed that his world was literally becoming darker and darker. He must have gone to the world’s most competent ophthalmologists; I really don’t know. What I noticed is that Patrick was healing himself, or coping admirably, by relentlessly challenging his failing vision.
He was famous for the portraits he shot of Manila’s fashionable and elegant women; but almost imperceptibly, he started taking pictures of life forms that ordinary mortals like us mindlessly ignore: Mother Nature’s botanical masterpieces invisible to our naked eyes, awesome entomological palettes only the Almighty can create. Patrick, the visually impaired, saw and photographed the magnificence of nature and shared his photographic chef-d’oeuvres with his friends and the public as well.
I was fond of Patrick because he was reserved, refined, cultured, always appropriately dressed, a gentleman of the Old World whom you would not hesitate to introduce to your parents. We had one thing in common, our love for Mexico where we both spent many happy years of our lives, though in different historical periods. His father was France’s ambassador to Mexico, and so was my uncle Leoni.
Patrick and I exchanged Mexican jokes, spoke in chilango, the urban slang; he called me Manita (which means sister) and in return, he was my Manito. His letters, greeting cards and photographs will always be treasured, bequeathed to my progeny, never to be auctioned.
Adios, Manito, vaya con Dios.