On Accepting an Invitation to Friendship in a Complicated Space

Mexico City, 2012. Santiago Borga wanted to make some photographs in Casa Trotsky, the house where Trotsky was murdered. He was trying to focus on something to do with his past that intertwined with a visit to this house as a child with his father. Santiago invited me along to see the house, to photograph this process. It was an invitation to make work, as an invitation to follow him along a certain train of thought that involves an historical moment and its ramifications in our lives. The space was small and cramped. I watched his attempt to capture something as elusive as memory, to piece together fragments of historical and personal significance, that might shine some sort of meaningful light on the present. It occurred to me this was also an invitation to friendship.