VÔ

he was a quiet man. no friends. the story told by the family is that he was left in an orphanage as a young child, because of the famine in europe, and only left at eighteen. they sent him to brazil shortly after — to try his luck, alone, with nothing.
he met my grandmother and together they built a living from a small grocery store. they bought a piece of land. they loved the earth.
he made scarecrows to guard the vegetable garden. he said they were guardians. i never quite understood what they were guarding — the plants, himself, or that piece of land that was everything he had.
he once said he wanted to die in portugal. that happy is the little bird that is born and dies in its nest.
one year before he died, i went to visit him. i watched him place one more scarecrow between the rows. for the first time, i raised my camera.
then he was gone. he kept his promise of dying beside his own.
and the scarecrows kept appearing. in the northeast of brazil, in portugal, in australia, in morocco. in every place i went to live my life, there was one.
i don't know if it's him. i know that i always stop. i hear his voice. i feel the very particular smell of his clothes.
and i photograph.