For many years I had collected photographs and represented photographers. Then one day I felt an almost physical need, a knot in my stomach, to make something myself. So I went to Madagascar for five days, simply to get away from everything and indulge myself. I loved every one of those days. I never meant to make a book, or anything at all. I just needed to say something.
When friends saw the pictures, they urged me to make a book, and I found out that choosing your own photographs is the hardest thing. I had no gallery and had never exhibited. Joel Meyerowitz and I had met for a minute at Paris Photo, and he did not know me. So I asked my friend Howard Greenberg for help. He asked me: "Who would you like to help you?" I replied: "Joel Meyerowitz." That afternoon Howard was flying to Berlin for Joel's surprise 80th birthday, and he took with him a note I wrote by hand.
On 21 March 2018 Howard's gallery sent Joel the PDF of my book, still a mock-up, and he answered the same day. He liked its rhythm, and then he was honest: my double exposures had to go. Quoting Norman Mailer, "you gotta kill your little darlings!" Two days later: "You want a book of tricks? Or a book of poetry?" I wanted a book of poetry. While he travelled, opened shows and gave talks, he kept answering, sent me to Robert Frost's essay "The Figure a Poem Makes" and asked me for patience. On 2 May 2018 his text for the book arrived. It ends: "I will probably never go to Madagascar, but some yearning I have always had has finally been satisfied."
A living history of photography, and a generous one. In 2022 his photographs hung in our gallery's second exhibition.
The book has its own soundtrack. On 25 November 2018, at Estudio Uno in Madrid, three musicians, Pablo Gutiérrez, Daniel García Bruno and Francisco López, recorded a piece for each photograph. Here every photograph plays with its own music.
Photographs: Pancho Saula, Madagascar, 2017, from the book "Pancho Saula: Madagascar" (MW Editions, 2018).
