- from text of my exhibit "Where Secrets Hide - a tribute to my photographic lineage" at Bloemhof, October 2010 -
"Paito, as we all called my grandfather, began to photograph when my mother was born in 1913 and my grandparents had just moved to Cuba. I still have his albums with photos of my mother and her sister Luisa and their younger brother Charlie – mostly studio photos, often printed in sepia, with the children dressed up for costume parties and other special occasions. My mother told me Paito would set up a closed balcony in their house in Habana with curtains or a large painting of a landscape in the background. In 1929 my grandparents returned to Curaçao with their three Cuban-born children, where my grandfather continued to photograph until his death in 1955. In fact, the last photo he took was of me, pensively plucking a flower.
In the summer of 2006, only a few months before my uncle Charlie died, I interviewed him about Paito’s photography and he made a drawing of the camera Paito used in his earlier years as a photographer, the Graflex – a pioneering camera with extension bellows – at a time before there were light meters, not to speak of those that are built-in. Paito would send his photos to be developed in a laboratory in England and he would draw cropping lines on the contact prints and send them back to England with the negatives to be enlarged. Long before Photoshop, he could ask them to add a sky from a different photo to one of his landscapes. It must have taken a very long time to get the finished photos, when mail was mostly carried by ship across the Atlantic.
The seeds of my own love of nature and spirit of adventure were planted on the many Sunday trips with Paito to the Curaçao countryside, where he took photos of hòfis and beaches, the rocky North coast, the saltpans and old, abandoned landhuizen."
my cousin Ron and I bicycling in the yard at Schaarloo 17.
Yaya reading stories to my cousin Ron from a Papiamentu newspaper.
COLOR SLIDES BY STELLA (TITA) MENDES CHUMACEIRO - MY MOTHER
- from text of my exhibit "Where Secrets Hide - a tribute to my photographic lineage" at Bloemhof, October 2010 -
"On all our excursions, Mammie took her own slides as well, having moved her artistic talents from painting to photography. Through the years, she won many prizes with her slides, and her flowers were chosen for a series of stamps of the Netherlands Antilles in 1955. In the nineteen-sixties she joined the wetenschappelijke werkgroep and continued to photograph while hiking to many lesser known parts of the island."
Text based on my eulogy at her graveside, October 29,2009
Our dear Mami has gone to rest - she was 96. Until the age of 91, when she had her second hip replacement surgery and subsequently broke her arm, she was an active, involved and highly independent woman – still painting her souvenirs that she sold in tourist outlets, avidly keeping up with current affairs and cultural matters and going to the theater to see all Papiamentu plays that were staged. Even when she stopped driving after her first hip replacement five years earlier, she would continue to give driving directions based on her unsurpassed sense of orientation, making sure nobody got lost. On her 90th birthday, she enjoyed the visit of her granddaughter Inbal and her great-grandchildren from Israel, where I have lived since 1970. Her beloved brother Charlie Gomes Casseres was still with us then and the party was held at the house of Charlie and Ruth.
In her last years, she would speak with most longing of the period of her life she spent living in the Cuban countryside – when the family had to leave Habana due to the fall of sugar prices and live on their plantation, near the town of Mahagua, in Camaguey. Mami was then between the ages of 14 and 16. It was a period of being outdoors in nature – fording rivers on horseback, playing tennis on an improvised court in their yard with her sister Luisa and riding in a little cart pulled by a billy-goat, which turned over in a ditch and Mami broke her arm. Because there was no proper medical care in Mahagua, she had to travel a long distance by train to Habana to surgically reset the bones. She still had a large scar on her upper arm, as physical evidence of her carefree years.
Her love of nature was nourished in the Cuban countryside, a love she inherited from her own father, Shon Benny Gomes Casseres - Paíto - and passed on to us, her children, together with her keen sense of space and her affection for maps which my brother Freddy continues today with his GPS and geo-referencing of old Curaçao maps.
When Freddy and I would go out to explore the Curaçao countryside in recent years and came home to tell her of our discoveries, she could always share our excitement, placing our adventures within her own intimate knowledge of the Curaçao geography and stirring up memories of her own past excursions – many with our father, Frank M. Chumaceiro, to capture the island on the many documentary films they made together.
The first time Freddy and I climbed the Christoffel was when Mami and Papi were filming their nature film, Rots en Water. That was in 1956. Both Freddy and I have climbed the Christoffel many times since and in recent years we have been doing it from every imaginable angle. Mami too climbed it once from the steep east side, with the Natuur Wetenschappelijk Werkgroep - whose excursions she joined when she was already in her late fifties – thus finding a new outlet for her love of nature.
A few years ago, when Mami asked me to go through a box of her personal old papers with her, I came across an essay she wrote, in Spanish, in 1932, when she was just a few years in Curaçao. It was called: The Most Beautiful Day of my Life and described an excursion of a group of young men and women – with, of course, their chaperones – to the Christoffel, starting out from the Kenepa side. What was most amazing about this well written text (I discovered my mother as a writer too!), was what I could read between the lines – her excitement was not only in her being outdoors and climbing the highest hill on the island, but it was also from her first flirtations with our father, Frank. I was very moved to learn that their romance started precisely on our beloved Christoffel – and so no wonder that that rugged hill is so deeply implanted in our genes!!
Her artistic talent is well known to many of you. While living in Mahagua, she dreamed of going to art school in Habana and was privately tutored for her matriculation exams so she could enter the art academy, but she had to let go of this dream, when the family left Cuba for Curaçao.
At first, she continued to paint on the island and her paintings from this period are all over the house - but she stopped completely when she married our father. Seeing her beautiful paintings, I grew up in awe of her as the real artist in the family, so that it was not until the age of 40 that I was able to allow myself to embark on my own career in art.
After her marriage, Mami moved her artistic talents to arts and crafts, and later to sewing all my dresses and costumes. But it is mainly in her photography that she carried on her art – here too, her father, Paíto / Shon Benny was the model and inspiration. She won prizes with her color slides and her photographs of Curaçao flowers were chosen for a series of stamps in 1955.
In the films she made together with our father, both her art and her love of the outdoors were able to find expression. They worked together on their films as a team – the titles always said “A film by Frank and Tita M. Chumaceiro.” They planned the films jointly, going out to shoot and then to edit and work on the sound and narration – complementing each other with their different skills and aptitudes, but very much as equals, inspiring and supporting each other in their creative work. The sight of seeing our parents work together in this intensive and creative process is one of their most precious gifts to Freddy and me.
Less known about Mami, perhaps, is her past as a competitive swimmer. She learned to swim in Cuba, when, at that time, in Curaçao, many girls her age did not know how to swim, as swimming classes were taught only in mixed company with men and the girls’ conservative parents would not allow this. When Mami came here in her late teens, she joined the swimming team in Asiento. The team was invited to travel to a competition in Coro, but as no chaperone could be found to accompany her, Paíto a pone pia abou – and did not let her go. That was the end of her career as a champion swimmer. She lived in a time that was not yet ready for her aspirations as a woman.
As children, she would show us how she would do the crawl, when we were all taught only the breaststroke and I was always amazed at how she could put her head in the water and breathe out and would not get tired of the rigorous stroke. Some ten years ago, Freddy took up swimming seriously, doing the crawl up and down the entire length of the Barbara Beach. I then started to join him on my visits to Curaçao, still doing the breaststroke. When I finally mastered the crawl - only last year, at my local pool in Jerusalem – I was particularly proud and as I swim, I feel a very close bond to my mother.
In swimming, hiking in nature and for me, painting and photographing, Freddy and I connect with our mother, carrying on her aspirations and being inspired by the example she set – remembering her in a very real, visceral way.
