Conchita Rey at Home, c. 1930

Reproduced in La mirada del tiempo: Del campo a la ciudad I, volume 11 of Memoria gráfica de la historia y la sociedad españolas del Siglo XX (Madrid: El País/EFE), p. 249. With thanks to Felipe Guerra Pinillos for sending me a copy of this book.

Portrait of Casimiro Municio Águeda (1874-1938?) by Alfonso, Madrid, May 1934

Previously a security guard, Águeda was appointed Madrid's executioner in 1915. Never comfortable in a role which he carried out with a notorious lack of skill, he took to drink. His health undermined by rheumatism and alcohol, he was hounded out of the neighbourhood of Tetuán by his neighbours. His only friends were a sharpener of knives and a castrator of pigs.

Image held in the Archivo General de la Administración, Alcalá de Henares. Reproduced in La mirada del tiempo: Del campo a la ciudad I, volume 11 of Memoria gráfica de la historia y la sociedad españolas del Siglo XX (Madrid: El País/EFE), p. 277. With thanks to Felipe Guerra Pinillos for sending me a copy of this book.

Here Lies Eric Arthur Blair

Here Lies Eric Arthur Blair from John Perivolaris on Vimeo.

Four Rainy Footsteps

Four rainy footsteps

Cemetery without borders

Eternal chessboard

Nothing Lasts for Long

Nothing lasts for long

Winter chestnuts lose their glow

Heat turns to longing

In My Mother's House

In my mother's house

Images without echo

Eternal embrace

Retinas

A palpable frisson of intimacy when the optician informs me that my retinas are still in tip-top shape. Jeepers, creepers ...