"Je ne fais rien gayeté san" *
Montagne

I have not read the news of the weekend and yesterday I come across the TV program Culture, Roda Viva, reintroducing the last interview with José Mindlin, on account of his death last Sunday, at 95 years old!

Portraying people we like, have spoken, is a two way street. We got involved with them, we come to admire them more (and in some cases even the disappointed) with his close presence. It's been like this since my first picture published in the newspaper.

Photo: Juan Esteves

That feeling typical ephemeral, which carries the photographic image in your content, hit directly in the pictures. And it need not be a professional like me. Even other photographers feel it, and even those who are not. The representation of human occupation and concern from his photographic primóridos possesses this bullet.

Always think about this fragility is portrayed as an out of existence in the real world, creating the paradox of the image that is ephemeral but that will withstand the time as a physical object, a photographic copy, a file in HD, a print book, in memory of those who admire him. José Mindlin will be forever in my memory, in fact he never left it!

José Mindlin portrayed in three or four times in the last 20 years, all of them in his library at the back of his beautiful house in the Campo Belo, Sao Paulo. A first for the Folha de S. Paulo (1990) and last for the book "St. Paul en mouvement" published in France in 2005. The phrase of Montaigne (Michel de, 1533-1592) above is reproduced in his interview by the French diplomat Anne Louyot, my partner in the publication.

On all occasions I was fortunate to tour the library guided by the owner. As well as working with books imagine the pleasure of this "work". A true learning, immeasurable. In fact, every time I came this "agenda" was not even a job, it was a great joy. Looked forward to the opportunity to review the library, talking to José Mindlin, could just hear it. The smaller of the books became a fascinating object in your hands! The simplest sentence, a life lesson!

He always looked for a book that would please his visitor, as if it were not already enough to be there breathing all that library, those rare editions, the headquarters of woodcuts that were exposed "complacent" about the low shelves that ran through the windows. You could see a beautiful array of Renin Katz and the window, the beautiful garden. He once showed me his old identity card carrying the newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo.

Photo: Juan Esteves

In 1993 I had a surprise when I received my studio in a box with six facsimile editions of the Green "Monthly Magazine of Art and Culture", published 1929, Cataguazes, Minas Gerais (http://www.nossacasa.net/arte/texto . asp? text = 66). Inside text Affonso Arinos, Mario de Andrade, Guilherme de Almeida Lopes Ascanio.

In the dedication: "To dear Juan, who likes the same things that I" give forward, could be the largest mixed up world! It was written! It was written! Written by José Mindlin! But every time that I came up the head, remembered the unconditional own modesty, and luckily, I picked up my insignificance.

José Mindlin these years never ceased to thank the portraits, and almost always made by sending a gift book, like the beautiful "A life among books, Team ties over time" (Edusp-tion of letters, 1997) which brings graphic design his daughter Diana Mindlin, photographs of books, made by his granddaughter, photographer Lucia Mindlin Loeb, and photographs of bindings made by Rosely Nakagawa.

José Mindlin was so modest and polite, which amounted to putting "like waiting for" the dedications. As if that were not possible, coming from a man who was brave to build something as valuable (in your library that will USP), which was against the dictatorship openly with great courage (if Vladimir Herzog) and always fought for Brazilian art ( his campaign with MASP and Bolsa Vitae) and many other important things in our culture, a legacy that he built with great joy! As his own motto "Je ne fais rien san gayeté"

* "I do nothing without joy". Translation of his friend, photographer and also a bibliophile Eduardo Muylaert.