"I have often been asked what I think of that photo. What I think, to quote Proust, is that it is charged with something of the “transparent substance of our best moments,” those that we shared while we were young. Boubat and I, before the course of life made us drift apart, caught upon the spell that we were living under back then and what can only be called a poetic adventure.”
~ Lella, 1987
(Great muse of artist Edouard Boubat)'Never give all the heart for love'
Never give all the heart for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss:
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright.
For they, for all smooth lips can say
Have given their heart up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost
For he gave all his heart and lost
~ W B Yates
(1865-1839)
I call this image “The Helen of Troy” photograph, a face that launched a thousand ships. I never get tired of looking at it. To say that it is haunting does not do it justice. It is one of the most romantic, “muse” images ever taken. I remember a special day I spent with Edouard many years ago in Paris. He had invited me to view a special exhibition with him of all the images he had taken of his great love Lella. As we walked around the museum together and he was telling me stories of their taking we stopped of course at this, his most famous image. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His expression and the tear coming from his eye said it all.
